Despite the surge in the number of new small businesses and start-ups, too few of these companies manage to achieve sustained growth. A strategy to help small companies scale up is one of New York’s greatest unrealized opportunities for economic and employment growth—and one of the best chances to expand the number of middle-class jobs.
New York City is humming with small business activity. The city’s entrepreneurial environment has expanded greatly in recent years, thanks to an explosion of new businesses in fields from financial technology and digital health to artisanal food manufacturing and film postproduction. Over the next few years, turning more of these small companies into larger businesses is one of New York’s greatest opportunities for economic and employment growth—and one of the best chances to expand the number of middle-class jobs.
This report is a publication of the Middle Class Jobs Project, a research initiative made possible by the generous support of Fisher Brothers and Winston C. Fisher.
Previous publications in this series include “Making It Here: The Future of Manufacturing in New York City” (July 2016), “Jobs in Transit: Opportunity in the Transportation Sector” (September 2016), and "The Rise (and Fall) of Middle Wage Industries in New York City" (May 2016).
The opportunity is clear. The city is home to more than 207,000 businesses with 20 or fewer workers. The number of businesses employing fewer than ten workers has increased by nearly 12 percent since 2008. Over the same period, Brooklyn added more than 8,000 new businesses with fewer than ten workers, growing nearly 22 percent.
Unfortunately, too few of the city’s small business manage to scale up and achieve sustained growth. Despite the surge in the number of new small businesses, growth among businesses with more than 100 employees has been largely flat since 2008 and the number of businesses with more than 1,000 employees decreased 1 percent during the same period.
–By Charles Euchner
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