Additionally, in order to investigate the link between firm growth and the firm life cycle, the study looks at firm survival, the ability of firms to maintain growth over time and job creation by firm age. [...] Employment growth of firms that operated over the 1993 to 2003 period was tracked and firms that exited before the end of the period, and firms that started operations after 1993, were tracked separately as “births” and “deaths.” Continuing businesses were tracked by firm size, geographic region and industry. [...] The methodology used in this study assigns firms to a growth category over the first four years of the 1993–2003 period and tracks them over the remainder of the period. [...] Figure 2 illustrates the distribution of firms in the second triage period (1999– 2003) relative to the distribution of firms in the first triage period (1993–1997). [...] For example, of the 13 000 firms that were hyper growth firms in the first triage period, fewer than 4 percent were hyper growth firms in the second triage period, approximately 12 percent were strong growth firms, and 35 and 50 percent became slow growth and declining firms respectively.