The firm age and firm size findings can lead one to ask the question of whether a relatively few fast growers or gazelles may be driving the results. Definitions of “fast growing firms” or David Birch’s “gazelles” may differ, but most agree that these companies are relatively rare and old. By one recent account, they represent 2-3 percent of all employer firms and are on average 25 years old (Birch, 1979; Acs et al., 2008). The creation of new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics has made a new type of analysis possible; this school of.
