Where startups to watch are thriving — and other happenings in the world of work

Welcome back to The Work Shift, a weekly newsletter that keeps you informed about the economy, labor market and evolving world of work through data-driven insights. Click subscribe to be notified of future editions.

Catch up on the headlines from the last 7 days.

• The post-pandemic entrepreneurship boom isn’t slowing down — and the startups to know about are located in a couple hubs. Read more about this below.
• Gross domestic product, adjusted for inflation, not only expanded in the second quarter of 2022, instead of contracting, but has grown more quickly since 2021 than originally thought, according to a periodic revision of Commerce Department data. Meanwhile, the data confirmed that the economy expanded at a robust 3% annualized clip in the most recent quarter. ??Cate Chapman
• Cooler prices are paving the way for rate cuts. The Personal Consumption Expenditures price index, a key inflation gauge, posted a 2.2% rate of change from a year earlier, down from 2.5% in July, the Commerce Department said on Friday. It demonstrates continued progress toward the Federal Reserve’s target as it contemplates further rate cuts. ??Cate Chapman
• Concerns about the labor market are weighing on Americans these days. The Conference Board’s confidence indicator fell 6.9 points from August to September, new data shows. That’s the biggest drop in three years. A separate new survey from the University of Michigan found that broader consumer sentiment edged up in September due to the Fed’s widely anticipated rate cut and the impending election.
• Hurricane Helene brought some of the worst flooding seen in the Southeast in a century, particularly in North Carolina. The storm, which made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane on Thursday, cut off power and gas for millions and is likely to be one of the country’s costliest storms ever. AccuWeather estimates the damages could range from $95 billion to $110 billion.??Jessica Hartogs
• Amazon employees are holding out hope its full-time return-to-office mandate could still be reversed. In an anonymous survey created by employees of the tech giant, the RTO policy ranked 1.4 out of 5 on average, with 1 representing the highest level of dissatisfaction. Survey organizers intend to present the results and alternate policy proposals to company leadership. ??Melissa Cantor

Take a closer look at recent trending topics — and engage with meaningful conversations happening on LinkedIn.

Small businesses are on the rise

• New business formation has more than doubled since 2020 — and increased by 29% from 2023 to 2024, according to new data from LinkedIn’s Mid-Market Enterprise Economic Report. This aligns with separate data from the U.S. Census Bureau showing that Americans are turning to entrepreneurship at close to record rates these days.
• “The pandemic created a surge in entrepreneurship, sometimes borne of necessity,” Sharat Raghavan, the director of research for LinkedIn's Economic Graph, explained. Industries that saw a flurry of business creation in the last year include construction, manufacturing and accommodation and food service.
• “Some of these businesses are generating meaningful employment and productivity gains,” Raghavan continued. Many are small businesses — or those with fewer than 500 employees — but have an outsized impact on the economy. Such companies employ about half of all workers in the U.S., according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Where startups to watch are thriving

• The post-pandemic entrepreneurship boom isn’t slowing down — and the startups to know about are clustered in certain areas. LinkedIn’s Top Startups, the 8th annual data-backed ranking of 50 emerging companies to watch, can largely be found on the coasts.
• One-third of the startups on the list are located in New York — but half of the startups on the list are based in California, the majority of which call San Francisco or surrounding Silicon Valley hotspots home. Jorge Guzman, a Columbia Business School professor who studied the performance of over 400,000 startups between the 1980s and 2010s, found that Silicon Valley is “really the exemplary location for innovation,” as it historically gives startups a better shot at venture financing, patenting and more because of its longstanding “entrepreneurial ecosystem.”?
• While San Francisco and New York dominate the list, other cities with ties to tech talent pipelines are also strong startup breeding grounds, including Seattle, Denver and Chicago. Consider Boston, where Cohere Health, the No. 3 startup on the list, is based. It’s a city with no shortage of STEM talent from schools like Harvard and MIT — and having those heavyweights around fosters a thriving startup scene with dozens of incubators and accelerator programs.

Flex workers are happiest with their pay

• On average 44% of U.S. employees feel well compensated for the work they do. But according to the latest findings of LinkedIn’s Workforce Confidence Index, there’s a divide between how onsite and remote workers feel about their pay.?
• Just 40% of onsite employees feel happy about how much they are paid for their work, compared to 50% of remote employees. Hybrid workers are about as likely as remote workers to say they are well compensated.
• One potential reason for the discrepancy? Time is money. “Balance makes people feel more appreciated, and they have more autonomy and agency over how to manage the nuances of life,” program manager Erin Petrey commented. “Commuting, child care, pet care, elder care and more are all added expenses that are not always considered in salary calculations,” she continued. Her own flexible work schedule allowed her to minimize how often she was paying a dog walker — ultimately saving her $2,000 per year.

Get ready for the week by seeing what’s coming up.

Tuesday, October 1:

• The Institute for Supply Management will release its monthly Purchasing Managers’ Index, which tracks if the manufacturing sector is expanding. A non-manufacturing version lands later in the week.
• The Bureau of Labor Statistics will release the Job Openings and Labor Turnover survey for August, which measures job vacancies across industries.

Thursday, October 3:

• The U.S. Department of Labor will release initial jobless claims for the previous week. The report, a proxy for layoffs, tracks the number of people filing for unemployment benefits.
• The Institute for Supply Management will release its monthly Purchasing Managers’ Index, which tracks if the non-manufacturing sector is expanding. It is an indicator of economic health.

Friday, October 4:

• The Bureau of Labor Statistics will release the September jobs report. The monthly release tracks the unemployment rate and how many jobs were added to the economy.