Where the Jobs Are: Entrepreneurship and the Soul of the American Economy, Published by Wiley, Looks at Startups as the Economy's True Engine of Job Creation

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"Anyone interested in a thriving American economy... should read and absorb the messages, ideas, and policy proposals in Where the Jobs Are." - Donald Evans, former U.S.Secretary of Commerce

Hoboken, N.J. (PRWEB) September 12, 2013

Wiley is pleased to announce the publication of Where the Jobs Are: Entrepreneurship and the Soul of the American Economy, a provocative new book by John Dearie, Executive Vice President for Policy at the Financial Services Forum and Courtney Geduldig, currently Vice President of Global Regulatory Affairs at Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services.

More than four years after the end of the Great Recession, 24 million Americans – a full 15 percent of the workforce – remain unemployed, underemployed, or have left the workforce discouraged. At the current pace of job creation, America will not return to pre-recession employment levels until 2023.

With the hope of generating new policy alternatives, in April 2011 the co-authors – at the time, colleagues at the Financial Services Forum – launched an effort to understand the nature and scope of the damage to U.S. labor markets and, if possible, to identify new ways to enhance the economy's job-creating capacity. Shortly after they began their investigation, they learned of research that demonstrates how virtually all net new job creation in the United States over the past 30 years has come from true “startup” businesses less than a year old.

In Where the Jobs Are, the authors recount the findings of a remarkable summer they spent traveling the country to meet and conduct roundtables with entrepreneurs in 12 cities across America. More than 200 entrepreneurs participated in these events – from a web-based software company in Seattle to an industrial construction firm in Orlando, from a developer of bioscience technologies in Boston to a distributor of glow-in-the-dark fluorescent fish in Austin – explaining in specific and vividly personal terms the issues, frustrations, and obstacles that are undermining their efforts to launch new businesses, expand existing young firms, and create jobs.

Along the way, the authors also conducted dozens of meetings with business and entrepreneurship academics, leaders of start-up incubators and accelerators, venture capitalists, angel investors, community development organizations, and lending institutions. Working with the Kauffman Foundation and polling firm National Research, Inc., they also conducted a first-of-its-kind nationwide poll of more than 800 new and small business leaders during the week of September 19, 2011.

In Where the Jobs Are, the authors:

•     Explain the differences between startups and existing businesses – large or small – and why startups represent the engine of job creation;
•     Discuss policymakers’ need to understand the unique nature and needs of startups, to more effectively stimulate economic growth and job creation following the Great Recession;
•     Assess the obstacles to new business formation and job creation identified by America’s entrepreneurs, including: an education system in need of reform; immigration policies that impede attracting and retaining the world’s best talent; difficulties in access to capital, regulatory challenges; tax complexity; and continuing economic uncertainty; and
•     Present a detailed, innovative, and uniquely credible 30-point policy agenda based on what America’s job creators told the authors they urgently need.

Ground-breaking, fascinating, and informative, Where the Jobs Are reveals with unprecedented clarity the major obstacles undermining the fragile economic recovery and job creation, and provides a vitally important game plan to unleash the job-creating capacity of the entrepreneurial economy and put a beleaguered nation back to work.

About the Authors:
John Dearie is Executive Vice President for Policy at the Financial Services Forum. Prior to joining the Forum in 2001, he spent nine years at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, where he held positions in the banking studies, foreign exchange, and policy and analysis areas. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Politico, American Banker, and China's Caijing magazine. Dearie lives with his wife and two children in Great Falls, Virginia.

Courtney Geduldig is Vice President of Global Regulatory Affairs at Standard & Poor's. Prior to joining S&P, she was managing director and head of federal government relations at the Financial Services Forum. Geduldig served as chief financial counsel to Senator Bob Corker (R-TN), handling a wide range of issues including financial markets, housing, banking, taxes, manufacturing, and international trade finance, and playing a key role in drafting and advising Senator Corker on the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. She also spent two years as the deputy assistant secretary for banking and finance at the U.S. Treasury Department. Geduldig is a member of the Maryland State Bar and lives with her husband, son, and daughter in McLean, Virginia.

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