It's not all bad news for female entrepreneurs. Though they may not be paying themselves enough (or at all), women business owners are influencing the economy in big ways. According to a new survey released this week, women are creating more jobs and hiring more workers than their male peers.
As the EY Global Job Creation Survey 2016 of 2,673 global entrepreneurs shows, women are outpacing men in job creation with an average expected growth rate of 10.9 percent compared with 8.3 percent among male entrepreneurs. What's more, they hired more new employees last year than they expected, with 43 percent of women entrepreneurs reporting they added more to their employment roster than anticipated, compared to 39 percent among their male counterparts.
But what is even more exciting is that young women entrepreneurs are leading the job creation charge. Women younger than 35 expect to have an average 16 percent increase in their workforces this year, and 56 percent report they hired more new workers last year than expected. That's compared to 13 percent of young men who expect to grow their employee numbers this year, and 56 percent who hired more people than they anticipated last year.
"There are signs that women entrepreneurs are fast becoming leading job creators," EY Global vice chair Uschi Schreiber said in a statement. "This is extremely encouraging as entrepreneurship has long been a route to employment and business success for many women despite the enduring gender gap."
And though very few surveyed business owners—148, to be exact—reported running $1 billion businesses, those who did were more likely to be women—19 percent more likely, to be exact. According to the study, 6.2 percent of the female business owners surveyed helmed $1 billion companies, compared with 5 percent of male entrepreneurs.
"While some challenges remain for female-led businesses, like often not scaling to the same extent as their male-led counterparts, our research shows some tentative and welcome signs that this is changing," Schreiber said. "Our research shows that female entrepreneurs are more likely to run billion-dollar businesses and outperform men when it comes to hiring and creating jobs."
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