Why We Should Teach Students How to Start their Own Businesses
Welcome to SAVE - our Social Alliance for a Vibrant Economy! Our mission is to inspire the next generation of innovators by providing them with the real world skills they need to start their own business and build their own business website. We believe that encouraging students to become more self sufficient is the key to a vibrant economy.
At the same time, the failure to teach students how to start a new business has contributed to at least three major economic problems.
The first problem is the drastic decrease in the number and percentage of new businesses started in the US during the past 30 years. You may have heard that “small businesses are the economic engine that supply most new jobs.” In fact, the majority of new jobs are created by small NEW businesses – firms that are in their first five years of operation.
According to a 2015 study by the Kauffman Foundation, new businesses under five years old have created an average of 2 million jobs annually from 1988 to 2012. Meanwhile businesses more than 5 years old have not created any new jobs. (See Link #5)
Given that large existing businesses like Microsoft hire about 10,000 people a year, it seems hard to believe that older existing companies do not create any new jobs. But the truth is that while Microsoft hires 10,000 people per year, they also fire 10,000 people per year. This rotation of employees in large corporations has created what is now known as the Gig Economy.
New business startups not only supply nearly all new jobs, they also provide innovations, new products, new services and new blood for our economy – and they provide competition for existing businesses. Unfortunately, the percentage and number of new businesses has been declining drastically during the past few years.
Historically, 15% of all businesses in the US were new businesses. However, in the past 10 years, the percentage of new businesses has fallen to only 10%. In 1977, 16.5 percent of businesses were less than one-year old, but by 2014 only 8 percent of all businesses were less than one year old. The problem with this shocking number is that the percentage of business failures is about 10% per year. Thus, the total number of all businesses has stopped growing because the number of business failures now exceeds the number of business startups. (See Link #5)
Here is a chart showing the decline in the total number of businesses in a 2016 US Senate report “America Without Entrepreneurs”. (See Link #6)
From 1990 to 2007, there was an average increase of 100,000 new businesses created every year. In 2008, only 10,000 new businesses were created. In 2009, there was a net decline of over 80,000 businesses. In 2013, the number of businesses in the US increased by fewer than 6,000. The Golden Goose driving our economy is not doing very well right now.
Americans are far less likely to start a company today than they were 30 years ago. According to a 2014 Small Business Administration report, only four percent of Millennials age 30 had started a new business or were self employed. This was the lowest rate of any generation – and was less than half of the 8.3 percent of Baby Boomers who had started a new business and or were self employed. Clearly, new small businesses in the US are facing a historic crisis. The consequences are fewer jobs, less innovation and less competition. (See Link #7)
The second problem is the lack of full time jobs.
While the “official” unemployment rate is very low, the real unemployment rate is much higher – especially among young adults. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are 259 million working age adults in America, excluding the military. Of these, about 163 million have a full or part time job. 112 million work 35 or more hours per week. The rest or 51 million people have only part time jobs.
At the same time, the number of Americans not in the labor force – people who do not even have a marginal part time job – hit a record 96 million in 2018 – about 4 out of every 10 adults. Millions of Americans are out of school and out of work. Put in more simple terms, out of every 10 people, only 4 have full time jobs, 2 have part time jobs and 4 have no jobs at all. (See Link #1)
It should be obvious that we cannot have a vibrant economy when only four out of ten adults in the US have a full time job. Clearly more new businesses are urgently needed.
The third problem is the percentage of young adults still living at their parents home. According to the Pew Research Center, for the first time in 130 years, young Americans ages 18-34 are more likely to live with their parents than in any other living situation. (See Link #2). According to the Census Bureau, about one in three young adults - 24 million young adults – still lived with their parents. According to a national survey by Trulia, almost 40% of young Americans were living with their parents, siblings or other relatives. (See Link #3)
According to a study by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, the number of adults under age 30 has increased by 5 million over the last decade, but the number of households for that age group grew by just 200,000 over the same ten year period. During the prior 10 year period, 1.7 million more households were created. (See Link #4)
In short, we now have an entire lost generation of young adults that for some reason have not been properly prepared to succeed in the new economy.
What could have contributed to this drastic decline in the rate and number of new small businesses in the past 10 years?
Many reasons have been given for this decline. At least three of these reasons are simply not accurate. First, some have claimed that young business owners have trouble getting the credit or funding they need to start a new business. But this claim ignores the fact that interest rates are at historic lows and there are literally dozens of “crowd – funding” processes for starting new businesses. Moreover, recent advances in technology have lowered the cost of starting a new business, including a new business website, down to almost nothing.
It has never been easier or less expensive to start a new business than it is today. Instead of declining, new businesses should be skyrocketing. But the problem is that schools have not kept up with new technologies and therefore students are not able to take advantage of these new technologies. When schools teach technology at all, they tend to teach tech skills that are more than 10 years out of date.
Second, some mistakenly think that older people do not start new businesses. They therefore have claimed that our aging population has caused a decline in the number of new businesses. But the fact is that older Americans have a higher percentage of business startups than younger Americans. Again, the number and rate of new businesses should be going up - not down.
Third, some have claimed that young adults are simply lazy. However, a 2012 survey by the US Small Business Administration found that 4 in 10 young people 8 to 21 would like to start their own business. A 2016 survey found that 45 percent of youths 18-24 years old who are underemployed and not in school were “highly interested” in learning how to start their own new small business. They simply lacked the knowledge of how to do so. (See Link #8)
Another survey found that 67% of young adults wanted to start their own small business. (See Link #9). Another survey found that 72% of high school students want to start their own business when they are older. (See Link #10)
Other surveys have found that nearly all young adults (94 percent) believes that entrepreneurship education is important. However, only 38 percent were even offered an entrepreneurship class during their school years and students felt that these few classes did not prepare them for the real world. (See Link #11)
The Real Problem – Lack of Real World Economic Knowledge
Today’s education system has been slow to change and lags far behind in teaching our kids the hands-on, real-world, high-tech skills they need to start their own successful small businesses. Change is needed to help the students become empowered with the necessary skills to function in the economy of the future. The workforce of the future requires our youth to be economically aware, to make smart choices and to be tech savvy.
Our Solution – Make Economics Fun to Learn
We believe that providing students with real world project based learning experiences centered on actually creating a business plan and a business website can give students the confidence they need to create their own businesses. Our goal is to plant the seeds for our future economy by helping students see that they can create their own businesses and control their own futures. We have therefore developed courses that combine personal skills, social skills, business skills and tech skills to help students gain experience in starting their own small businesses.
What makes our courses unique
While most courses on economics and small business focus merely on business skills or social skills, we believe it is essential that students also learn technology skills required for the success of future small businesses. Here are just a few important elements of our courses:
Recruiting and Training Mentors is a Key Part of our Program
We partner with local Community Organizations
We partner with the Boys and Girls Club and other community organizations to provide these courses to local students.
Learn More about our Courses
For more information on upcoming courses, see our course website: https://kidsbizclub.org/
How you can help
We need your support! For our program to succeed, we need community members to volunteer to be mentors for our young students. We also need funding to help us buy more laptops so we can bring our program to more students. It is up to all of us to prepare the next generation for success in business and success in life.
To learn more about how you can help our program, click on the Get Involved menu item above.
References:
Link #1: https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat08.htm
Link #3: https://www.trulia.com/research/millennials-leaving-nest/
Link #4: http://www.jchs.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/son_2016_200dpi_ch3.pdf
For original research, also see: https://bipartisanpolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/BPC-Economy-Confronting-the-New-Economy.pdf
Link #7: https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/advocacy/Millenial_IB.pdf
Link #8: www.aeoworks.org/pdf/young-adults-report.pdf
Link #10: http://millennialbranding.com/2014/high-school-careers-study/
Link #11: https://www.inc.com/tina-wells/millennials-changing-entrepreneurship.html
