States in the American South produced more entrepreneurs than any other region in the U.S., according to an analysis of 2021 data.
ClickUp used Kauffman Indicators of Entrepreneurship data to find the 15 states with the highest rates of new entrepreneurship. Kauffman uses data from the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics to analyze entrepreneurship across the country.
This analysis of Kauffman data ranks states by the rate of new business owners as a percentage of the state population. It includes incorporated and unincorporated companies, as well as those with and without employees. Ties are broken by the number of jobs created per capita. Startup one-year survival rates are also included but aren't factored into the ranking.
The ranking illuminates the continuation of long-term trends observed in U.S. job creation. Entrepreneurial culture has been expanding beyond the coastal meccas it used to be concentrated to and into Southern population centers for some time. And the layoffs and workplace disruptions that emerged with the pandemic in 2020 and 2021 only served as a shot in the arm to startup culture, boosting new business formation across the board, according to new business application data from the IRS.
Southern states—including Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas—have spent recent years vying for high-tech jobs through highly publicized incentive deals, often landing among the final contenders for new manufacturing plants and headquarters relocations. Electric vehicle startups, which had immense investor momentum in 2020 and 2021, are just one example.
Amazon-backed EV maker Rivian is perhaps the most prolific recent instance of this jockeying back and forth by state officials armed with tax breaks, who are looking to draw more jobs and innovation. Southern states are also among the fastest-growing regions for domestic migration from around the country, as Americans flock to places where their dollar goes farthest. Many of them, like Texas, are praised by companies and elected officials for unique tax codes that lend themselves to job creation.
It would appear, based on the most recent Kauffman Indicators of Entrepreneurship data, that those very same states now boast significant concentrations of entrepreneurs building new companies.
Texas lands at 15th in this ranking. However, Oklahoma, Georgia, and Southwestern states (including Arizona and New Mexico) also place high. Continue reading to see if your state is among the most entrepreneurial in the country.
