Entrepreneurship is at the heart of every thriving community. When new businesses take root, they bring fresh ideas, create jobs and shape the future of local economies. That’s why we’re launching the Pulse of the Heartland Entrepreneurship Data Hub—a new resource designed to help communities better understand the strength of their entrepreneurship ecosystems and guide the policies and support systems that help them grow.
UNDERSTANDING THE DATA:
At the core of the hub are two key measures: Heartland Forward’s own Young Firm Employment Share and Young Firm Knowledge Intensity metrics, reported at the state, metro and micro levels.[1] These metrics indicate the quantity and quality of young businesses within a region and are defined as follows:
- Young Firm Employment Share—the percentage of all private sector workers in a region employed at a business 5 years old or younger. This captures not only how many new businesses are created, but how many people they employ.
- Young Firm Knowledge Intensity—the share of young-business employees who hold a bachelor’s degree or higher, offering one way to measure the concentration of expertise in a region’s young businesses.
Prior Heartland Forward research shows that communities, regardless of size, with stronger performance on these two metrics often see greater job growth overall, making these valuable benchmarks to guide local leaders and economic development initiatives.
The Hub has two interactive components to explore:
- Map View: Compare regions’ performance using our two metrics. Benchmark bars show how the heartland and non-heartland areas are performing on average, offering quick context for each selection. These values correspond to the selected geography type, so when the user selects “Metropolitan Statistical Area” and “Young Firm Employment Share,” the heartland bar represents the (population-weighted) average Young Firm Employment Share across all heartland metros for the given quarter.
- Trend View: Track how these measures change over time. This helps community leaders and researchers spot emerging success stories. Heartland and non-heartland averages are again reported as benchmarks and correspond to the selected geography type. As an example, the Florence-Muscle Shoals, Alabama metro has experienced a substantial increase in its Young Firm Employment Share since 2022; economic development practitioners may benefit from learning what is happening on the ground in the metro.
This is just the beginning. The Hub will be regularly updated with new metrics and deeper analysis added over time. The Heartland Forward Talent Pipeline team will also release regular analysis of the Hub metrics as well as case studies on rising communities like Florence.
We invite you to explore the tool, follow the data and see how entrepreneurship is shaping the heartland’s future. Readers are encouraged to check back often!
[1] These metrics are calculated using data from the Census Bureau’s Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics Quarterly Workforce Indicators database.
Additional Entrepreneurship Resources: