Amid the political maneuvering, there is, happily, some serious work being done by the Kauffman Foundation 
and the Institute for Competitiveness & Prosperity to figure out where new jobs actually do come from. The surprising truth is that over the last twenty five years, almost all of the private sector jobs have been created by businesses less than five years old.
“In fact, between 1988 and 2011,” write Jason Wiens and Chris Jackson of the Kauffman Foundation, “companies more than five years old destroyed more jobs than they created in all but eight of those years.”
Existing firms are net job destroyers
“Both on average and for all but seven years between 1977 and 2005, existing firms are net job destroyers,” write Wiens and Jackson, “losing 1 million jobs net combined per year. By contrast, in their first year, new firms add an average of 3 million jobs.”
“New businesses account for nearly all net new job creation and almost 20 percent of gross job creation, whereas small businesses do not have a significant impact on job growth when age is accounted for.”
“Policymakers often think of small business as the employment engine of the economy. But when it comes to job-creating power, it is not the size of the business that matters as much as it is the age. New and young companies are the primary source of job creation in the American economy. Not only that, but these firms also contribute to economic dynamism by injecting competition into markets and spurring innovation.”
“Many young firms exhibit an ‘up or out’ dynamic,” write Wiens and Jackson, “in which innovative and successful firms grow rapidly and become a wellspring of job and economic growth, or quickly fail and exit the market, allowing capital to be put to more productive uses.”
“Our public policy emphasis,” writes Roger Martin, Academic Director of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the Rotman School of Management, “should be on enabling entrepreneurial firms to drive innovation and prosperity.”
Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor. Read the whole story at The Surprising Truth About Where New Jobs Come From.
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