Sep.06, 2012 | 9:38 AM–”I have 10 years of experience, an academic degree and I’ve always been an outstanding employee who brought a lot of clients and money to his employers. So why can’t I find work?”

This question has been tossed around by many, many skilled people who have been rejected time and time again by potential employers, all without a satisfactory response. Instead of searching for the answer in a Sisyphean job search for another salaried position at another company, the time has come to encourage qualified people to become entrepreneurs.

In light of current unemployment figures and the financial crisis, this is the time to encourage new entrepreneurs to establish new businesses that will drive the economic activity of the marketplace, and in particular, provide job seekers with an additional path to get a foot in the door and develop professionally. In the United States, these people are called “forced entrepreneurs” or “accidental entrepreneurs.” Around half of the biggest companies in the U.S. claimed to have been founded amid periods of economic downturn.

For many months, already, the heads of industry have been warning about a decline in the relative economic standing Israelis have enjoyed in recent years, particularly in face of the collapse of so many of Europe’s economies. Recently the warnings have been kicked up a notch amid the background chatter of a possible attack on Iran, one that would likely to fuel a new economic crisis and put even more jobseekers back on the labor market. Although it is still unclear whether the increase in jobseekers is cyclical or part of an underlying trend, it is clear that the office chairs of many salaried company workers are no longer firmly fixed to the ground.

Israelis’ high levels of creativity and entrepreneurialism are known around the world, and the talent isn’t solely concentrated in the high-tech field. Many jobseekers can and want to establish their own small businesses, which would provide them with a degree of economic self-sufficiency and independence from the job market. A policy that promotes vigorous economic activity must concentrate specifically on providing support to entrepreneurs just starting out, and to small- and medium-sized businesses, which are the first companies to feel the effects of an economic downturn…Read More>>

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