Small Business Labs

APRIL 19, 2012

Two good articles from Bloomberg Business Week highlighting a huge issue that is not getting enough attention - the lack of men getting college educations.   The chart below is from Men are Becoming the Undereducated Gender and shows the long-standing college education gap between women and men.       Even more alarming, the gap is forecast to grow with 60% of all college students being women in 2019 (up from 57% in 2011).  Why this is a huge problem is covere

2019 156

2019 2011 Skills UPS 156

Small Business Labs

APRIL 16, 2012

GigaOm's Women make up the majority of online freelancers, study says covers research from Zinnov showing that women comprise 55% of the workers on online talent sites like Elance and oDesk.   This is consistent with  our research on U.S. independent workers.  We found that women comprise 53% of this group.   I haven't been able to get a copy of the Zinnov study, but both the GigaOm article and an article on the study in Venture Beat quote Zinnov as saying w

Elance 154

Elance AT&T UPS 154

Small Business Labs

APRIL 18, 2012

The Kaufman Foundation and LegalZoom have teamed up to produce a quarterly Startup Confidence Index. The goal of the index is to measure how much confidence startups have in their business and the economy. Their  most recent survey shows that 53% of startups are home-based.  This is consistent with other studies on both startups and small businesses.  For example, the Rise of the Homepreneur study from Network Solution and us showed that a bit over 50% of small businesses are h

Confidence 151

Confidence Networking Goals UPS 151

Small Business Labs

APRIL 17, 2012

The Declining Average Size of Establishments: Evidence and Explanations is a wonky article from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) that shows the average size of small businesses has been shrinking for the last decade or so. The key data from the report is on the size of startups: The average size of establishment births (new startups, excluding seasonal businesses)in the 1990s was around 7.6 employees, whereas the average size of births fell from 6.8 employees in 2001 to 4.7 employees in

2001 142

2001 2011 AT&T 142

Small Business Labs

APRIL 20, 2012

The Smithsonian Magazine has a great special section on Futurism.  The focus is on the origins and history of futurism. It's really fun and they have pictures of flying cars, household robots and other futuristic stuff envisioned in the 1900s.   The flying car below is from a 1955 article forecasting that flying cars would be common by 2000.

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