Entrepreneurs, in comparison, are a job-creating powerhouse, working outside of the spotlight to bring jobs to a community. In fact, the Kauffman Foundation reports that these new businesses account for a disproportionate amount of new job growth, creating nearly all net new jobs and almost 20 percent of gross job creation.

Before, we only measure the economic impact of our startups at the national level. With We Create Jobs, Kansas City was able to track that number at the metro level.

Every single year, Kansas City startups bring an average of 16,376 new jobs to Kansas City.

We Create Jobs is a new report researched by SourceLink with our KCSourceLink affiliate that uses a new statistical analysis to quantify the impact of first-time employers to a specific metro's economy, here the bistate, nine-county region of Kansas City.

Why is this important?

Connecting the data at the metro level with the existing theory pertaining to entrepreneurship is a positive step that can help communities and economic developers:

• rally support for entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial ecosystem building
• validate the work of entrepreneurial support organizations
• build the case and an infrastructure to support and sustain entrepreneurship
• support civic leaders in their quest to boost economic activity