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When jobs are this tough to find for young Americans, the enterprising ones hire themselves. More than a third of jobless managers starting their own businesses were under 40 in the first quarter of 2002, says a survey released last week by the outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. That's up from 25% for the fourth quarter of 2001.

Striking out on your own is in some ways easier in a recession: loans are cheap, and hiring is easy. Sean O'Scannlain, 37, managed a Chicago seafood company for seven years but left to start a competing firm last July. The Sept. 11 airport closures disrupted shipments for weeks and forced him to run lean. "We're far better now for having gone through a very difficult nine or 10 months," O'Scannlain says. For Lauren Creamer, 27, of Brighton, Mass., two years of fighting the bureaucracy at a large nonprofit convinced her that she would be happier working for herself. She started looking for investors for Firefly Toys last year, just as the economy began sliding toward recession. "A lot of people said, 'How can you do this now?'" Creamer says. "But younger people can take the risk. We don't have a mortgage. We don't have kids." Sept. 11 crystallized her determination. "We're not going to live forever," she says. "Why would I put my dreams on the back burner?"

Tech start-ups have thinned, but Silicon Valley venture capitalist Bill Tai says the ideas he sees today are more practical and better executed than the ones in the boom years when, he says, "we saw a lot of passion and energy but not a lot of depth."

Of course, going it alone involves costs. "I'm sure that my choices have inspired ulcers in my family and in my fiance," says John Hearn, 31, a veteran of two failed dotcoms who started his own consulting firm last year in New York City. Aside from the dental plan, he envies little about corporate life: "My generation got a taste of how exciting work can be. It's difficult to settle for something less."