Significance of business start-ups for the development of the qualification, age and wage structure of jobs in Baden-Württemberg

Business start-ups have become a popular subject of research in recent years and economics in particular has looked at them from many different perspectives. One central aspect has always been the question of what contribution new companies can make to employment growth. Many studies show that new companies do create new jobs, but that their number is not as significant as the number of new jobs created in established companies. One aspect that received little attention in this context was the quality of the newly created jobs:

To what extent does the quality of jobs created in start-ups differ from the jobs created by companies already established on the market in the relevant regions or sectors? Possible quality aspects could be

• Working hours (full-time, part-time) marginality
• Qualification structure
• Wage level and wage dispersion
• Stability of jobs
• To what extent are there differences between start-ups in Baden-Württemberg and start-ups in Germany or in other selected western German states?
• To what extent do start-ups - also in comparison to established companies - offer employment potential for older people, women or foreigners?
• What are the differences between successful and less successful start-ups? What role do the quality of jobs and the structure of the company's workforce play in the development of start-ups? Can differences be identified in the development patterns of start-ups that, for example, rely more heavily on full-time employment or on older employees or mixed-age teams?

This project answers these and other questions in particular on the basis of the recently improved data from the Establishment History Panel of the Federal Employment Agency ([www.iab.de]) in the form of differentiated descriptive and multivariate analyses - with a focus on Baden-Württemberg.

The report “The significance of business start-ups for the development of the qualification, age and wage structure of jobs in Baden-Württemberg” was published (in German) as IAW Policy Report No. 2/2010.