True Entrepreneurs or Just Desperate Job Seekers?

While satisfying my daily online news fix, I came across a thoughtful article written by Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor for President Bill Clinton, and a commentator whose point of view I always take note of.

Mr Reich talks in his column how a recent survey by the Kaufmann Foundation (entrepreneurial development and support) indicates that new business launches in 2009 were the highest in the past 14 years, higher even than during the peak of the dot.com boom.

To what does Mr. Reich attribute this explosion in start-ups?

He describes how more and more downsized Americans, particularly those over 50, are finding a dead end in replacing their corporate jobs and so are launching small, one-person business ventures in an attempt to get some family income going once again.

He then goes on to question whether many of these newly minted small business owners are truly entrepreneurial or whether they are just self-employed people who are struggling to get some personal cash flow going once again.

I say that it doesn't make much difference what you call these new self-directed individuals.

All are reflecting a new reality in America that is characterized by each of us acting much more like what has been described as "You, Inc." where we sell our experiences and skills in the open marketing to a succession of customers instead to a single corporate employer.

This entrepreneurial phenomenon will only grow as we move forward, for many reasons.

Here are a few of them:

1. Over 3 million Americans turn age 60 each year. Many will either be downizized or pushed into retirement by the time they hit 60...but most are nowhere near ready to "hang up their spurs".

2. Corporations are permanently building into their personnel plans the use of temporary and contract workers, at all levels not just administrative. When you work on this basis you are legally an "independent contractor" which is a form of being entrepreneurial.

3. The past ten years have been a real grind for corporate managers, who've faced multiple reductions in force, earned no real gain in wages and often made to feel of little value after 50. Suffering from job burnout, more and more older Boomers want to a new way to work - with more flexibility of schedule, more daily fun and less limit on their income growth. The only way I know for most of us to achieve all three is to run our own businesses.