Government has acknowledged that entrepreneurs are society’s wealth creators

You never forget your first. And however many times you do it again, it will be the memory of your first hire that will so often be a defining moment in your start-up story.

It’s in that context that young firms might find something interesting in their inbox this morning. After all, it’s not every day you receive a note from the Chancellor of the Exchequer. But thousands of entrepreneurs will on Thursday, and the message will be a simple but vital one: for building your business and creating jobs, thank you.

It’s a message that a month from today will be backed up with something more substantial: an annual discount of up to £2,000 on National Insurance Contributions for employers across the UK.

It is an important recognition of what small businesses are achieving on the front line of growth. Principally, that has meant getting people into work, creating jobs that would otherwise never have existed. More than 1.6m private sector jobs have been created since early 2010 and the latest ONS data showed that 395,000 more people are now in employment than in February 2013. That increase has coincided with the start-up boom, with more than half a million new businesses registered in the UK last year.

Critically, it is business that is taking up the slack of job creation as the public sector retrenches. The underlying effect is a rebalancing of the jobs market, making it ever more reliant on the private sector. You don’t have to be a red-blooded capitalist to see how positive and important that is to the long-term shape of the UK economy.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies released a report last month showing that, in London, eight private sector jobs have been created for every public sector job lost since 2010.

What the data cannot reveal is the plethora of everyday stories of entrepreneurs and small businesses making the difference. Too often, jobs are treated as commodities. The truth is that giving someone a job is a delicate act of creation and represents the driving purpose of entrepreneurship. Hiring is both a risk and a responsibility. Every job created represents the triumph of optimism and an investment in the future.

While a £2,000 concession may seem like small beer to a major corporation, for a struggling start-up it could be the lifeline needed to keep going.

From government, it is an important acknowledgment that entrepreneurs are society’s wealth creators; it could act as an incentive to those held back from their ambition of starting a business: according to the most recent RBS Enterprise Tracker, 38pc of UK adults aspire to be entrepreneurs but still only 6pc actually become one.

The increasing confidence and muscle of the private sector is nowhere more evident than in the increasing propensity of entrepreneurs to hire. These new jobs are a result of wealth creation, particularly within the small business community. Not jobs manufactured by the state, but created by enterprise.

The Employment Allowance is an encouragement and an acknowledgment that the hiring power of Britain’s 1.3m employers has never been more important than it is right now.

Michael Hayman is co-founder of Seven Hills