Looking for Jobs in all the Wrong Places

In America we make the challenge of finding employment even harder by telling our children -- our young people entering the workforce -- to look for jobs where few jobs exist for them.

We tell them to go to school K-12th grade and graduate (great).  

And then we tell them to go to college and graduate (still great).

And then we tell them to go and work for a big company or government. Neither of which are hiring. This is not a knock on big companies or government. We need both in society. But the reality is that big companies actually grow based on 'efficiencies,' not more people. That's the business truth. 

The reality is that the majority of jobs come from small businesses, entrepreneurs, start-ups and shoot ups, in year 3-7.  

But look below at the graph, for a sense of where our young people (U.S. business undergraduate students) say they actually want to work. 

The majority of jobs (70% of all jobs) come from companies with 500 employees or less, with just about half of all jobs coming from employers of 100 employees or less.  

Less than 1,000 companies in America, the largest economy in the world, employ 10,000 people or more.  

Out of 26 million companies, and 6 approximately 6 million that employ one person or more.

This amounts to leaders and our young people, looking for jobs in all the wrong places. 

And here is the worst part.  While the truth is that every big business was once a small one, for the first time in our lifetime, America is recording more small business deaths than small business starts.  And this my friends, is directly connected to the 'jobs' crisis in America.  

It is connected, frankly, to the jobs crisis not only here in the states, but in the Middle East and other places where small businesses and entrepreneurs are not being encouraged, nurtured and born.

And this is precisely why I created Project 5117 as a solution to many of our problems in the hardest hit parts of the country.  

And from this emerged HOPE Business In A Box Academies (a create a job strategy), and announced just this week, our HOPE B- Business Compact (a get a job strategy) for young people in middle school and high school.

Read my companion piece, Internship America: Putting a Generation to Work.

Okay, let's go

John Hope Bryant is the Founder, Chairman and CEO of Operation HOPE and Bryant Group Ventures, an Inc. Magazine/800-CEO-READ bestselling business author ofLOVE LEADERSHIP: The New Way to Lead in a Fear-Based World (Jossey-Bass). His newest bestselling book is How The Poor Can Save Capitalism: Rebuilding the Path to the Middle Class (Berrett Koehler Publishing).

Bryant is a Member of the U.S. President's Advisory Council on Financial Capability for Young Americans, co-founder of the Gallup-HOPE Index with the Gallup Organization, and co-chair for Project 5117, which is a plan for the rebirth of underserved America.

Bryant is the only bestselling author on economics in the world who is also of African-American descent.

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