Where the Jobs Are
by John Dearie · 2013
Genre: Business
Rating: 4/5
A forceful case for entrepreneurship as the engine of American job creation. Smart and readable, though it sometimes mistakes confidence for proof.
Where the Jobs Are makes a convincing case for entrepreneurship, but not a wholly convincing case for itself.
John Dearie writes with the zeal of a policy advocate and the urgency of someone who thinks the country is wasting time it does not have. The book is smart, energetic, and often useful, but it is also more sermon than investigation. If you want a brisk pro-startup argument grounded in interviews and data, it delivers; if you want a skeptical, fully balanced account of job creation in America, it stops short.
Where the Jobs Are is built around a simple, durable premise: if the American economy is going to produce enough work for enough people, it has to make life easier for entrepreneurs. Dearie and Courtney Geduldig frame startups not as a Silicon Valley fetish but as the country’s practical employment engine, and they are right to push back against the lazy assumption that big corporations alone will save us. The book has a nice gift for translating policy into plain English. It knows the difference between a talking point and a mechanism, which is rarer in business books than it should be.
The strongest sections come when the authors move from abstraction to the lived experience of founders. Their reporting on roundtables and interviews gives the book some texture: the paperwork, financing gaps, regulatory friction, and plain old uncertainty that small firms face when trying to get off the ground. Dearie is especially good on the mismatch between political rhetoric about innovation and the actual, often tedious conditions required for innovation to survive. You come away understanding that “supporting entrepreneurs” is not a mood. It is a set of choices, most of them boring, and therefore politically hard.
The book also has a clear point of view about what job creation really looks like, and that clarity is refreshing. Instead of pretending all business growth is the same, it focuses on young, high-growth firms as the place where net new jobs actually appear. That argument, which has become more familiar since 2013, still lands because the authors keep returning to first principles: employment is not conjured by slogans, and recovery is not a synonym for prosperity. There is moral force here too. Dearie treats work as a civic issue, not just a spreadsheet metric.
Still, the book’s certainty is also its weakness. It is so committed to the startup thesis that it sometimes treats the case as more settled than it is, skimming over the fact that many startups fail, that startup-friendly policy can be captured by the already advantaged, and that job quality matters as much as job quantity. The prose can slip into policy-brochure mode, with broad claims that outpace the evidence. One wants more skepticism, more attention to inequality, and more engagement with the possibility that not every promising firm needs the same kind of help. The book argues hard; it does not always argue deeply.
Even so, Where the Jobs Are remains a useful snapshot of a post-recession anxiety that never fully went away: who, exactly, is going to build the next wave of work? Dearie answers with conviction, and conviction has value when the alternative is policy numbness. The book is best read as a forceful brief for entrepreneurial policy rather than a definitive account of the economy. That is not nothing. In a genre often addicted to cheerleading, at least this book knows what it is cheering for.
Key Takeaways
- Startup Policy
- Job Creation
- Economic Advocacy
Summary
- The book argues that startups, not large corporations alone, are the real engine of job creation in the American economy.
- Dearie and Geduldig combine policy analysis with reporting from entrepreneurs, giving the book some much-needed ground-level detail.
- Its central strength is clarity: it explains why small, high-growth firms matter without drowning the reader in jargon.
- The authors are persuasive on the obstacles founders face, especially financing, regulation, and administrative friction.
- The book’s tone is urgent and readable, making it a strong entry point for readers who want a pro-entrepreneurship case.
- Its main limitation is its lack of skepticism: the book leans hard into the startup fix and underplays failure, inequality, and job quality.
- At times, the prose feels like policy advocacy dressed as analysis, which weakens its authority.
- Verdict: worthwhile and timely, but more useful as a brief than as a final word.
Chapter Guide
- Chapter 1: America's Jobs Emergency
- Dearie and Geduldig diagnose the post-recession jobs crisis, arguing that conventional recovery metrics mask persistent unemployment and underemployment. They establish that startups, not large corporations or small businesses, are the true engine of job creation.
- Chapter 2: Not Just Small Businesses
- The authors challenge the assumption that small business and entrepreneurship are synonymous, distinguishing high-growth startups as the critical but overlooked category driving net job gains. This reframing becomes central to their policy argument.
- Chapter 3: On the Road with America's Job Creators
- Through interviews and case studies, the authors profile successful entrepreneurs and the conditions that enabled their growth. This section grounds the book's argument in real business narratives and regional variation.
- Chapter 4: The Regulatory and Capital Barriers
- Dearie and Geduldig identify systemic obstacles to startup formation: regulatory complexity, access to capital, and policy uncertainty. They argue these barriers disproportionately harm new ventures relative to established firms.
- Chapter 5: Tax and Fiscal Policy
- The authors examine how tax code, capital gains treatment, and fiscal policy either incentivize or discourage entrepreneurial risk-taking. They critique provisions that favor passive wealth over active business building.
Read the full review at https://reviewerinsight.com/book/69f5700bc84c962c4b76add1/where-the-jobs-are