High-Growth Firms in the United States: Key Trends and New Data Opportunities

J. Daniel Kim, Joonkyu Choi, Nathan Goldschlag and John Haltiwanger

Working Papers from U.S. Census Bureau, Center for Economic Studies

Abstract: Using administrative data from the U.S. Census Bureau, we introduce a new public-use database that tracks activities across firm growth distributions over time and by firm and establishment characteristics. With these new data, we uncover several key trends on high-growth firms—critical engines of innovation and economic growth. First, the share of firms that are high-growth has steadily decreased over the past four decades, driven not only by falling firm entry rates but also languishing growth among existing firms. Second, this decline is particularly pronounced among young and small firms, while the share of high-growth firms has been relatively stable among large and old firms. Third, the decline in high-growth firms is found in all sectors, but the information sector has shown a modest rebound beginning in 2010. Fourth, there is significant variation in high-growth firm activity across states, with California, Texas, and Florida having high shares of high-growth firms. We highlight several areas for future research enabled by these new data.

Keywords: Firm Growth; Business Dynamism; Entrepreneurship; Business Dynamics Statistics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L11 L25 L26 O30 O40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 41 pages
Date: 2024-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-cse, nep-ent, nep-ind, nep-ino, nep-sbm and nep-tid
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https://www2.census.gov/library/working-papers/2024/adrm/ces/CES-WP-24-11.pdf First version, 2024 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: High-Growth Firms in the United States: Key Trends and New Data Opportunities (2024)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cen:wpaper:24-11

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