Report: Missouri startups continue hiring surge, creating 40K+ jobs in every corner of the state

Editor’s note: KCSourceLink and MOSourceLink are non-financial, community partners of Startland News.

Missouri startups across the state created 40,169 jobs in 2022, according to the latest data, nearly matching the surge in the number of jobs they generated in 2021.

Taking into consideration the number of employees these same firms hired in 2018 and in each succeeding year as well as job losses, Missouri startups created 185,479 cumulative jobs from 2018 to 2022, accounting for 81 percent of all new jobs in the state.

These are just some of the key findings in the latest MOSourceLink “Show Me Jobs” report, which reveals the jobs created and wages paid by Missouri’s new and young firms and tech startups.

In addition, the pandemic spurred startups across the state: Missouri created 17,936 startup firms in 2021, slightly down from 18,234 in 2021, but up from 16,287 in 2020 and 15,934 in 2019.

Where are these startups located? Through a heat map that measures startup density by geography, “Show Me Jobs” illustrates that startups, defined as first-time employers with fewer than 20 employees, are launched statewide.

Michael Carmona, KCSourceLink, laughs alongside Jill Meyer, UMKC’s Innovation Center’s Technology Venture Studio, Doug Adams, Morgan Stanley, and moderator Miranda Schultz, The Porter House KC, during a “Resources for Your Startup” panel during Startland News’ Kansas City Startups to Watch in 2024 seminar and reception event; photo by Taylor Wilmore, Startland News

“Startups are job creators in every corner of the state, and ‘Show Me Jobs‘ shows their effect on our economy,” said Michael Carmona, network builder for MOSourceLink. “The data paints a very strong picture for startups in 2022 as the pandemic ebbed and illustrates how with the right resources, these new job-creating juggernauts fueled recovery in the state.”

St. Louis County, Jackson County, St. Louis City, Greene County and Saint Charles County round out the top five for startup creation in Missouri, followed by Clay, Boone, Jefferson, Jasper, Platte and Cape Girardeau. These are listed in order.

In addition to jobs created by first-time employers, the report also provides year-to-year comparison data regarding job creation by new and young firms and by the tech sector. It also covers wage growth, the industrial density of startups and the geographic dispersal of Missouri startups.

Here are further highlights from the report (available for download at mosourcelink.com/jobs:

• New tech firms created an average of 946 jobs each year for the past five years. In 2022, new tech firms created 882 jobs, down from 2021’s record surge of 1,297 jobs.
• The health care and social assistance sector has seven times as many startups as Missouri’s next highest sector of professional, scientific and technical services.
• Wages at startup tech firms start at nearly double the state’s average wage.

In this recent report, “Show Me Jobs” quantifies the impact of new and young firms to Missouri’s economy. Using data from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages for Missouri, MOSourceLink used a statistical analysis to calculate the number of jobs from first-time employers by looking at employers that paid for unemployment insurance for the first time. MOSourceLink further sorted that number to include only those employers with 20 or fewer employees at the time of first hire.