Job Creation by Company Size Class: The Magnitude,Concentration and Persistence of Job Gains and Losses in Canada

The statistical observation that small firms have created the majority of new jobs during the 1980s has had a tremendous influence on public policy. Governments have looked to the small firm sector for employment growth, and have promoted policies to augment this expansion. However, recent research in the U.S. suggests that net job creation in the manufacturing small firm sector may have been overestimated, relative to that in large firms.The first part of this paper addresses various measurement issues raised in the recent research, reassess the issue of job creation by firm size, and pushes this work beyond the manufacturing sector by employing longitudinal data covering all companies in the Canadian economy. We conclude that over the 1978–92 period, as a group small firms did account for a disproportionate share of both gross job gains and losses, and net employment increases, no matter which method of sizing firms is used. Measurement does matter, however, as the magnitude of the difference in the growth rates between small and large firms is very sensitive to the measurement approaches used. Part one of the paper also produces results for various industrial sectors, and examines employment growth in existing small and large firms (i.e., excluding births). It is found that employment growth in the population of existing small and large firms is very similar. Attempts are made to introduce a job quality aspect to the analysis by using payroll rather than employment data. Payroll data allow any relative change in hours worked or wages paid in small (relative to large) companies to be incorporated in the findings. This did not significantly alter the conclusions reached using employment data only.The second part of the paper looks at concentration and persistence of employment creation and destruction within size classes. If growth is highly concentrated, knowing that a firm is small will provide little information about its prospects for growth. Most small firms would grow relatively little, or decline, while a few expanded a lot. It is found that both job creation and destruction is highly concentrated among relatively few firms in all size groups. There are fast growing firms in all size classes, and although most job creation is found in the small firm sector, the fastest growing large firms out-perform the majority of small firms in any given period. Finally, the employment creation performance of businesses are compared over two three-year periods. It is found that knowing that a firm is a high performer (in terms of jobs created) over one period is of only limited value in determining growth in the second period. This is particularly true among small firms. These results suggest that firms which expand rapidly during one period are replaced to some considerable degree by others in the subsequent period.     

Foreign Firms and Chinese Employment

This paper examines the effect of foreign direct investment (FDI) on employment in the Chinese manufacturing sector. As one of the world's largest recipients of FDI, China has arguably benefited from foreign multinational enterprises in various respects. However, one of the main challenges for China, and other developing countries, is job creation, and the effect of FDI on employment is uncertain. The effect depends on the amount of jobs created within foreign firms as well as the effect of FDI on employment in domestic firms. We analyse FDI and employment in China using a large sample of manufacturing firms for the period 1998–2004. Our results show that FDI has positive effects on employment growth. The relatively high employment growth in foreign firms is associated with their firm characteristics and their high survival rate. Employment growth is also relatively high in private domestic Chinese firms. There also seems to be a positive indirect effect of FDI on employment in private domestically‐owned firms, presumably caused by spillovers.     

How Large are the Direct Employment Effects of New Businesses? An Empirical Investigation for West Germany

We analyze the development of employment in start-up cohorts, which is the direct gross employment effect of the new businesses. The data is for West Germany and covers the 1984–2002 period. While total employment in the cohorts remains above the initial level in manufacturing, we find a pronounced decline of employment below this level in the service sector. Only a small fraction of the firms create a considerable amount of jobs. The contribution that the start-up cohorts of the 1984–2002 period made to total employment in 2002 is nearly three times as high in services as in manufacturing.      

Industry changes in technology and complementary assets and the creation of high-growth firms

This study uses employment data to examine why some industries host more new high-growth firms than others. Using a unique data base of 201 industries over a 15-year period, we find that increases in the proportion of employment of scientists and engineers in industries are positively associated with counts of fast-growing new firms; however, we do not detect a relationship between fluctuations in the proportion of employment in sales and production occupations and counts of fast-growing new firms. The findings suggest that technological innovation is an important determinant of entrepreneurial opportunity. Further, they suggest that private new firms are an important means of organizing commercial innovation and that new firms may be less constrained by complementary assets than has been previously understood.     

Testing Gibrat’s Law for Small, Young and Innovating Firms

This article analyses whether small, young, and innovating firms have experienced a greater employment growth than other Spanish firms over the period 1990–2000. The study draws upon a sample of 1272 manufacturing firms in which only 967 of the firms survived for the entire ten year period. The analyses test Gibrat’s law, both by least squares and by utilizing the procedure proposed by Heckman in which a probit survival equation is first estimated to correct for sample selection bias. Two estimators correcting for selection bias are utilized: one that incorporates the inverse Mill’s ratio and the other that employs maximum likelihood methods. All the results reject Gibrat’s law and support the proposition that small firms have grown larger. Additionally, the results show that old firms grow less than young ones, and innovating activity – both process and product – is a strong positive factor in the firm’s survival and its employment growth.     

Structural problems of the next few years

The Federal Republic of Germany will be facing in the next few years changes in its economic structure which, if not in their extent, in their effect on the employment situation will be without parallel in the post-war period. After fifteen years of nearly uninterrupted full employment, it is reasonable to expect in the medium term an over-all rate of unemployment of the order of 2–3 p.c. (0.5–0.7 mn).     

Analyzing the Link Between Real GDP and Employment: An Industry Sector Approach

This paper offers insight into the “jobless recovery” phenomenon recently experienced in the U.S. economy by examining industry-sector employment responsiveness to the long-term real GDP expansion occurring during 1991- 2001. Two employment models are specified—one using real GDP as the only explanatory variable and the other using real GDP, five additional macroeconomic performance variables, and a time trend as explanatory variables. Monthly data for April 1991–March 2001, and OLSQ regressions are used to derive industry-sector elasticities of employment with respect to real GDP. Empirical results highlight the importance of controlling for non-real GDP macro variables when determining relationships between employment and real GDP. The results identify five industries exhibiting “jobless recovery” characteristics (having negative employment elasticities) and a broad range of employment elasticities across industry categories. The findings may be helpful to business economists modeling their own industry employment and suggest that even during extended periods of real GDP expansion, there may be a case for using industry-specific labor market transition initiatives to assist employment growth. JEL Classification C82,R31     

New firms and labor market entrants: Is there a wage penalty for employment in new firms?

In this paper, we explore the role of new firms as an entry point to the labor market. Because the vast majority of new firms are short-lived, it is a risky decision to accept employment in a new venture. It can be argued that individuals with little (or no) labor market experience are more willing to accept the high risks associated with employment in new firms. Hence, new firms may work as an entry point to the labor market. Nevertheless, some research concludes that one disadvantage of employment in a new firm is that new firms pay less (Shane in Small Bus Econ 33:141–149, 2009). However, this empirical conclusion is primarily based on literature on the wage penalty of small firms. In this paper, we study whether the wage penalty of employment in a new firm persists if we focus solely on labor market entrants. In the empirical analysis, we employ an employer-employee matched dataset that covers the Swedish population during the period from 1998 to 2008. We use the propensity score matching method to study the wage differences between labor market entrants employed in new and incumbent firms. We find an average wage penalty of 2.9 % for labor market entrants employed in new firms over the studied period.     

Small and Medium Enterprises in Thailand: Recent Trends

This paper reviews the evolution of small and medium firms in Thailand in recent years. It shows that such firms did not preserve their share of total employment during the period 1987–96; indeed, their share fell from 60% to 52% over this period. Much of this decline was felt in the category of very small firms (with less than 10 workers). This aspect is explored further by looking at small firm employment shares in three sub-periods of varying overall economic growth rates. It is found that when overall economic growth is high, the share of small firms tends to contract possibly because many small firms become medium in size and others disband because their owners can find more remunerative employment in larger firms. In slower growth periods, the employment share of small firms appears to rise probably because larger firms may be taking in less new workers or even laying off workers. The paper also calculates productivity measures (technical efficiency and total factor productivity) and shows that different measures give different rankings by size of firm.     

农民工的劳动合同状况及其影响因素研究

劳动合同是农民工最重要的劳动权益之一。从是否签订劳动合同和合同年限等两个方面考察了农民工的劳动合同状况及其影响因素。通过江苏省的调研数据,农民工劳动合同的签订率仅为44.2%,劳动合同的年限普遍较短。Probit和负二项回归模型的结果显示:受教育程度、持有技能证书、对相关劳动法律的了解程度与农民工签订劳动合同以及合同年限之间均存在着显著的正相关关系;第一代农民工的合同年限明显长于新生代农民工;从事建筑业以及在民营、个体单位就业的农民工,签订劳动合同的可能性将显著下降,合同年限也显著缩短。提出了政策建议。     

Business regulation,labor force participation and employment in industrial countries

Using data from 19 industrial countries for 5 years in the period 1990–2002, this paper analyzes to what extent anticompetitive business regulations, like price controls and administrative obstacles to start a new business, affect labor force participation and employment rates. According to the regression results, they appear to lower both. Corruption, which is one result of strict business regulation, is also found to lower labor force participation and employment rates. While most effects on the general population seem to be modest, the effects on the low-skilled are likely to be substantial. The results are robust to variations in specification.     

An Analysis of External Finance Availability on SMEs’ Decision Making: A Case Study of the Emerging Market of Poland

This article explores an understanding of the entrepreneurial behavior of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Poland, one of the emerging markets of the European Union, during the recent period of economic slowdown. It considers the role of accessibility to external financial resources in shaping decisions undertaken by such enterprises. The hypothesis is that, in a period of economic slowdown, SMEs that have difficulty in accessing external sources of financing adopt different strategies than those that have free access to those resources. The findings indicate that access to the external sources of financing is a statistically significant factor determining decisions of SMEs in relation to employment reduction, price reductions on goods/services, suspension of previously planned investments, and an increase in the level of salaries. Consequently, the study is important as it considers factors that impact the success and survival of SMEs in the emerging market; it is also unique, as it investigates these aspects in the recent period of the global economic downturn. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Quantile estimates of the impact of R&D intensity on firm performance

This paper investigates the relationship between initial research and development (R&D) intensity and firm growth using a unique data set for firms with R&D activities in Austria during the period 1995–2006. Results based on the least absolute deviation (LAD) estimator show that initial R&D intensity has a positive and significant impact on both employment and sales growth in the subsequent 2 years. Quantile regressions for each cross-section reveal that the impact of R&D intensity is significant from 0.3 to the highest quantile of the conditional distribution of employment growth. Furthermore, the elasticity of employment growth with respect to R&D intensity is highest for firms at or slightly below the median of the distribution of firm growth. Finally, we find that the impact of R&D decreases significantly over time.     

Job generation and new and small firms: Some evidence from the late 1980s

This paper adopts a components of employment change methodology and examines the process of job generation in the late 1980s for three contrasting regions of the United Kingdom. The emphasis in the analysis is on the contribution of new and small firms to regional manufacturing employment growth. The results indicate the important role of new and small indigenous firms in the job generation process, particularly in Northern Ireland, in the period 1986–90. However, the level of displacement associated with these job creations is sufficiently high to cause concern about the longterm sustainability of these trends. The paper concludes by arguing that policies designed to stimulate new firm formation and small firm growth are not in themselves sufficient to promote growth.     

How wages and employment adjust to trade liberalization: Quasi-experimental evidence from Austria

We study the response of regional employment and nominal wages to trade liberalization, exploiting the natural experiment provided by the opening of Central and Eastern European markets after the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1990. Using data for Austrian municipalities, we examine differential pre- and post-1990 wage and employment growth rates between regions bordering the formerly communist economies and interior regions. If the ‘border regions’ are defined narrowly, within a band of less than 50 km, we can identify statistically significant liberalization effects on both employment and wages. While wages responded earlier than employment, the employment effect over the entire adjustment period is estimated to be around three times as large as the wage effect. The implied slope of the regional labor supply curve can be replicated in an economic geography model that features obstacles to labor migration due to immobile housing and to heterogeneous locational preferences.     

Subsidizing Industry: An Empirical Analysis of Irish Manufacturing

Irish industrial policy makers have a long history of extensively using grant subsidies in order to encourage the creation of jobs in Irish manufacturing sectors. In this paper we empirically investigate the actual success of this strategy using sectoral level data on employment and grant payments over the period 1972–2000. Results from our empirical model of an employment growth equation confirm that grant provision has indeed played a significant role in creating employment.     

Employment change in the small business sector: Evidence from five manufacturing industries

This paper examines the scale and nature of employment flows into and out of the small business sector (SBS) in five United Kingdom manufacturing industries over the period 1979–85. It first provides a taxonomic framework for analysing these flows. It then draws on specially prepared analyses from the Annual Census of Production (ACOP) for the UK to show that the SBS in each industry has experienced very substantial turbulence: although the SBS (across all five industries) lost only four per cent of 1979 employment over the period, movement in and out each represented about half of 1979 employment. Most gains and losses were in the very small size bands. The paper also briefly explores the relationship between births and deaths and industrial characteristics across the five industries. The study raises questions about the causes and costs of high turbulence in the SBS. It also demonstrates the potential value of the ACOP data base for longitudinal studies of business in the UK.

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Job Flows and Job Quality by Establishment Size in the Finnish Manufacturing Sector 1980–94

This paper studies how employment patterns and growth vary with establishment size in the Finnish manufacturing sector during the period 1980–94. The findings are compared with the predictions of alternative theories of firm growth. The paper also examines some aspects of job quality in different size categories, including wages, labour productivity, working hours, labour turnover and the persistence of jobs. According to the findings, small establishments create and destroy jobs relatively more than large establishments. In addition, in the smallest size categories both the share of gross job creation and the share of gross job destruction is larger than the share of employment. However, there is no clear relationship between establishment size and net employment change. Furthermore, after studying different aspects of job quality, we can conclude that the jobs offered by small and large establishments differ greatly in many respects and it is difficult to evaluate the total welfare effect.     

进口贸易、R&D溢出与中国制造业的就业变动

本文利用1996～2005年中国制造业的面板数据,实证分析了进口贸易的R&D溢出对中国制造业的就业总量变动的影响及影响的部门差异。研究结果表明,考虑到进口贸易对国内制造业的R&D溢出效应后,中国制造业从发达国家的进口没有通过替代国内生产而减少就业,相反,进口贸易通过R&D溢出增加了整个制造部门的就业。由于技术进步的两面性和各部门要素密集度的不同,进口贸易的R&D溢出对就业的影响存在明显的部门差异。由于R&D投资回收期长、国内企业的技术吸收能力较弱,国内R&D投资和进口贸易的R&D溢出对就业总量的影响具有显著的滞后性。中国劳动力市场中的趋势效应、价格效应和规模效应的存在,使就业变动呈现动态调整的特征。     

Leveraged buyouts,private equity and jobs

Using a unique data set of 533 leveraged buyouts (LBOs) observed over the 1993–2004 period, covering all size ranges, the study conducts a systematic analysis to determine and quantify: (1) the effect of private equity (PE) and LBO governance on employment and (2) whether the size of the target firm impacts on post-buyout employment effects. After accounting for endogeneity, we find that LBOs, whether PE financed or not, do not have significantly different employment levels compared with a control sample of firms. Additionally, there are no employment effects contingent on the size of the target firm. The findings contrast with anecdotal claims of job destruction. The study therefore makes an important contribution to the debate on the impact of LBOs and PE.