The Entrepreneurship Engine

As much of Europe struggles with double-digit unemployment this year, the United States has been creating an average of 200,000 new jobs a month. One of our great advantages is the relative ease with which Americans can start new businesses. Physical disability, the desire to stay home with young children, racial or religious discrimination–all of these can be obstacles to traditional employment, but they are less serious barriers to starting your own business.

Now, thanks to the explosion of the Internet, the barriers to entrepreneurship have fallen still further. That is especially good news at a time when Americans worry about competition from abroad for manufacturing and even many service jobs.

A remarkable new survey by ACNielsen International Research finds that 724,000 Americans use eBay, the online auctioneer and general marketplace, for their primary or secondary income. That figure is up from 430,000 in a similar 2004 survey. In other words, about 300,000 people have started businesses on eBay in the past year. So eBay can properly be viewed as America’s No. 1 generator of, not just businesses, but jobs.

By James K. Glassman

Full Story: http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.23102,filter.all/pub_detail.asp