According to a report issued last week by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, Wisconsin is now last in the nation in new startup activity.
The state fell five spots, from 45th to 50th, the report said, putting it behind West Virginia, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Alabama among the bottom five states. The top five states on the Kauffman list were Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, Colorado, and Vermont.
The report ranks states in three categories: rate of new entrepreneurs, a measure of business ownership; opportunity share of new entrepreneurs, a proxy indicator of the percent of new entrepreneurs starting businesses because they saw market opportunities; and startup density, the number of startup firms divided by total population of a place.
