The United States is experiencing higher rates of small business activity, with Austin being one of the leaders in businesses owned by young adults. According to the 2016 Kauffman Index of Main Street Entrepreneurship, released last week by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, there was a “sharp uptick” in the survival rate of businesses in the last year. The trend is seen in states as well as metropolitan areas. "The Main Street Entrepreneurship Index provides additional evidence that U.S. small business activity has rebounded from the downturn and continues to gather strength," said Arnobio Morelix, senior research analyst at the Kauffman Foundation in a Nov. 17 release. "More new businesses are making it through their first five years of operation. While this could indicate that a lack of dynamism is allowing less-productive firms to hang on longer, overall the entrepreneurial increases bode well for the established, small businesses that underpin much of our economy." Texas was one of five large states with the highest rates of business ownership for young adults ages 20 to 34, named alongside Colorado, Florida, Minnesota and Wisconsin. The metropolitan area with the highest rates of business ownership for young adults are Miami, Austin, Nashville, Tampa and San Diego. Young people aren’t the only ones finding business success in the Texas capitol. Austin was also named as having high rates of business ownership for older adults ages 55 to 64, along with Portland, San Francisco, Miami and San Diego.