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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowIn an annual study that measures general startup activity in cities and states across the country, Indiana moved up slightly and Indianapolis slipped in the rankings from a year ago.
The 2017 Kauffman Index of Startup Activity, released Thursday, ranked the Indianapolis-Carmel metropolitan area 38th among 40 metro areas. That's down from 33rd a year ago and 27th in 2015.
Among the 25 most populous states, Kauffman ranked Indiana 21st, up from 22nd a year ago.
The rankings are based on criteria in three categories:
— Rate of new entrepreneurship, which measures the percent of the adult population of an area that became entrepreneurs in a given month;
— Opportunity share of new entrepreneurs, which measures the percent of new entrepreneurs who essentially left their jobs to start new businesses;
— Startup density, which measures the number of startup firms per 1,000 firms in an area. Startup businesses are defined as firms less than a year-old employing at least one person besides the owner.
Indianapolis saw its rate of new entrepreneurship fall from 0.18 percent in 2015 to 0.16 percent in 2016, the latest year of available data. Its opportunity share dropped from 82.57 percent to 71.1 percent over that span. For both categories, those tallies were the lowest in at least seven years.
Startup density, which is based on 2014 data, also fell, from 76.3 startups per 1,000 firms to 72.7. That's just a hair above 72, set in 2010.
Miami, Florida, Austin, Texas, and Los Angeles were the top three metro areas, respectively, for the Kauffman's latest startup index.
In state rankings, Indiana moved slightly lower in its rate of new entrepreneurship, from 0.23 percent to 0.22 percent. Startup density fell from 63.5 percent to 61.6 percent. The opportunity share of new entrepreneurs grew to at six-year high, from 74.98 percent to 80.23 percent.
California, Texas and Florida led the state rankings, respectively.
The full list of interactive U.S., state and metropolitan-area stats can be found here.
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