Story provided by The Washington Post – 

Six years after the Great Recession ended, the nation’s economic recovery remains tenuous. The hiring rate has weakened; the manufacturing sector continues its rapid decline; and the labor force has shrunk to its lowest level since the 1970s. Nobody has felt this sluggishness more than millennials, who are facing lower incomes and higher unemployment than their parents did at their age. That’s a big problem: Projected to be 75 percent of the global workforce by 2025, millennials are the key to a sustainable economic recovery. But the leaders orchestrating our economy’s turnaround keep overlooking them and failing to cultivate their full economic potential.

Millennials have made clear how they want to help rebuild our economy.Survey after survey has shown that the nation’s youngest workers have a hungry entrepreneurial spirit, driven by the opportunity for independence and creativity. A recent study by Bentley University found that most young adults dream of starting their own businesses: “Millennials view career success differently than their parents do. Rather than striving for the CEO spot, 66 percent of millennials would like to start their own business.” We conducted a study that found that, in terms of setting professional entrepreneurial goals and having formed an idea about the type of company they want to start, millennials outpace older Americans by approximately 10 percentage points.  But despite their dreams of becoming business owners, few millennials actually do: Just 3.6 percent of households headed by young adults own stakes in private companies, compared with 10.6 percent in 1989, according to a recent Wall Street Journal analysis. The future of our economy depends on finding a way to shrink that chasm between having an idea and having a business.

Cultivating entrepreneurs is great for the economy because the new firms they create are a prominent source of job growth. Washington understands that. This summer, the Obama administration will hold the first White House Demo Day, billed as an effort to make entrepreneurship more accessible to people from diverse backgrounds and geographies. This broad, inclusive goal is positive. But the White House has made it clear that its focus is actually much narrower. When it comes to celebrating entrepreneurship, our society, led by Washington and Wall Street, has become fixated on the technology industry, funneling money and support primarily into tech start-ups. That myopic focus is misguided. In contrast, most aspiring entrepreneurs dream about starting Main Street companies – restaurants, barbershops, boutiques and other everyday retail and services.

The timing is perfect to capture the economic promise of millennial entrepreneurship. The oldest members of the generation are reaching what has historically been the prime entrepreneurial age, at a time that coincides with improving economic conditions and renewed optimism. The climate for Main Street start-ups is looking brighter, with consumers spending more and interest rates having remained low.

Of course, the entrepreneurial process is complicated and fraught with risk: Hopeful business owners must turn their visions into solid business plans, assess the market, determine how much capital they need and find backers before they can even launch. After that, it gets even harder. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that approximately half of start-up companies fail to last more than five years. These are among the hurdles that have prevented many young people from becoming their own bosses. For this generation — already saddled with debt and struggling to get the private-sector experience that helps one launch a business — the risk can be especially intimidating. Although as a group, Main Street companies can be less risky than technology start-ups, they are often underfunded and poorly planned. In the absence of funding and planning, they are driven by passion,and that’s not sustainable.