‘Small Business creates jobs’ or so the saying goes. The corollary to this statement is that it is big business’ mandate to shed jobs as it attempts to do ‘more for less’. Both statements are true… well kinda.

Both statements are only kinda true as they don’t tell the full story. The truth I feel is something more along the lines of ‘entrepreneurship creates jobs’. An entrepreneurial venture needn’t be housed in a small business to create jobs, large entrepreneurial firms create jobs all the time as they create new categories and markets and in so doing create jobs that weren’t even conceived of in the past. Small business can create jobs but not all small businesses create jobs.

“Data on small and medium enterprises suggests that these enterprises contribute about half of total employment, more than 30% of total gross domestic product.”

Half? Wow, that is significant.

But the large majority of small businesses never really create jobs beyond the owner. According to Towards a Ten Year Review, 2.3 million people own at least one Value Added Tax (VAT) unregistered company but only 338 000 owners have employees, and there were only 734 000 employees. Now maybe it is just me, but something doesn’t add up here?

To me, the definition of a job is that you are in someone else’s employ, that you have a salary. If that is the case then these 2.3 million entities have only created 734 000 jobs. That is … well nothing. It really means that what we have is a large group of survivalists and the real gap is in developing entrepreneurial skills, skills that leverage the courage and the nous to ‘go it alone’ and aid in the creation of businesses that employ people beyond the owner.

I have, for all of my working life, been an entrepreneur, I have never had a job.  As such, it is not surprising that I view entrepreneurship as a potential solution to our rather large unemployment problem. But I can also tell you that there is a huge difference between being self-employed and being an entrepreneur. It seems to be that in South Africa we are self-employed out of necessity, which does not make us entrepreneurs, and our ability to forgo the efficiency of big corporations for the flexibility of self-employed individuals is not limitless. That is to say that we cannot achieve the goals we are setting for small business without the missing entrepreneurial ingredient.

For me there is no doubt that entrepreneurship is key to job creation. What we need to facilitate is a culture of entrepreneurship, real game-changing entrepreneurship. This is not something that is achieved overnight.  The NDP sees 90% of new business coming from small, medium and micro enterprises (SMME’s) by 2030. This is a brave claim and will require the development of some real entrepreneurial capabilities. I personally believe that we should be backing any endeavour that seeks to facilitate entrepreneurial development. NGO’s such as Paradigm Shift, and Hope Factory, organisations like the Awethu Project and Shandukablackumbrellas need our support. If 90% of new jobs are going to come from entrepreneurs we had better all get behind their development.

One response to “Why small business does not create jobs”

  • 31
    Aug

    Marieke du Plooy :

    Hi Andrew,

    thank you for the mentioning Paradigm Shift! We definitely agree that entrepreneurship is the single, most effective solution to poverty! For more information and what we do and how we do it, please visit our website: http://www.shiftingparadigms.org

    Warm regards,

    Marieke du Plooy
    Paradigm Shift

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