This kind of study provides all sorts of opportunities for shell games, since the classification of "startup" vs "established", or "new" vs "old" or "big" vs

This kind of study provides all sorts of opportunities for shell games, since the classification of "startup" vs "established", or "new" vs "old" or "big" vs "small" often obscures the real issues. Just to take an example, imagine the person who cleans the lobby of a Fortune 500 headquarters lobby. This person could be a W2 employee of the big co, or could be an independent contractor, or could be an employee of a small firm (say 5-10 people) that does the cleaning, or could be an individual or small firm that owns a franchise for a cleaning services business -- and thus be something that's some kind of symbiotic association of a big co and a little co. The work that gets done is substantially the same, and it's done for the same reason, but the benefits, tax consequences and how it shows up in economic statistics is entirely different.