Start-ups Consistently Fail

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) recently posted data that shows the rates at which different cohorts of new establishments fail over time.  The numbers show strong consistency in failure rates across start-ups founded in different years.  In the figure below, I have graphed the percentage of new establishments surviving over their first ten years for the cohorts  founded between 1994 and 2001.  Ten years after starting, the share of new establishments still alive ranged from 34.7 for the 2001 cohort to 37.0 percent for the 1998 cohort.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/scottshane/2011/08/17/start-ups-consistently-fail/