The new Kauffman Index of Growth Entrepreneurship is reporting the biggest year-to-year increase in entrepreneurial business growth in a decade. Younger companies are adding more staff and experiencing greater growth than they have recently.  

It was enough for the Kauffman Foundation to say that “U.S. entrepreneurial growth largely has rebounded from the Great Recession,” though it does note that other growth indicators are trending down.

Here are the chief findings from the latest index report:

>> Startups measured by the study grew 58.5 percent in their first five years, between 2008 and 2013. The previous cohort’s growth rate was 46.9 percent, the lowest it’s been since the early 1970s.

>> About 1.1 percent of studied firms increased their head count to 50 or more people within the first 10 years of operation. That’s below the historical norm of 1.2 to 1.4 percent, but better than the 0.9 percent of 2011.

>> For every 100,000 businesses studied, there were 79.3 firms with $2 million or more in annual revenue and three years of annual revenue growth in excess of 20 percent. This measure has basically plateaued, Kauffman found, though it’s still higher than recent years.

“High growth, particularly among young firms, is an important contributor of jobs, output and productivity growth,” said Arnobio Morelix, senior research analyst at the Kauffman Foundation, which conducts the annual study.

“Younger entrepreneurial firms again are contributing more broadly to business and job growth. While the indicators show that growth is still below the historical norms before the Great Recession, a third consecutive year of gains is an encouraging sign. In the past two years alone, these growing young companies created an estimated 200,000 jobs in the economy.”

Data for the state and city level will be made public on June 2. The Kauffman Foundation is planning to release similar reports this year on startup activity and Main Street entrepreneurship.