More than 70 percent of entrepreneurs don’t plan to hire any additional employees this year, according to a survey conducted this month for the Kauffman Foundation.

A third had to reduce the size of their workforce last year, the survey found.

That’s “a pretty grim picture,” said Carl Schramm, the foundation’s CEO, since new firms account for most of the nation’s job growth over the past 30 years.

More than 60 percent of the entrepreneurs surveyed said the economy is on the wrong track, and a majority thinks the recession will continue for at least another year.

More than 40 percent cited the ability to generate jobs as the economic problem facing the country that worries them the most. The federal budget deficit was next at 18 percent, followed by affordable health care at 17 percent.

More than two thirds of the entrepreneurs surveyed favor expansion of tax credits for research and development, temporary elimination of payroll taxes, and expanded lending by the Small Business Administration.

Schramm, whose foundation focuses on entrepreneurship, said entrepreneurs start new businesses even during economic downturns. Government policies could help this process along, he said.

First, the federal government should “rationalize our immigration system” by granting “instant citizenship” to foreigners who graduate from U.S. universities and ease visa requirements for foreign entrepreneurs who want to start businesses in the U.S.

Schramm also proposed making some of the more onerous Sarbanes-Oxley Act requirements for public companies optional, based on a vote by shareholders.

Steps also need to be taken to ease the commercialization of academic research and get more students interested in entrepreneurship, Schramm said.

Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, in his speech at the Kauffman Foundation’s “State of Entrepreneurship” event on January 19 in Washington, said entrepreneurship is a key part of the Obama administration’s economic agenda.

“There is no better vehicle for job creation than fostering entrepreneurship,” Locke said.

The administration wants to “create a better ecosystem for entrepreneurship,” he said, by allocating more resources to research and development, and doing a better job connecting the ideas produced by this R&D with entrepreneurs.

The Commerce Department’s new Office of Entrepreneurship and Innovation will host a forum February 24 with university leaders, scientists, and entrepreneurs to discuss the role of universities in innovation and commercialization of federally funded research.

Locke said it’s important to encourage the right kind of risk taking in the economy—encouraging entrepreneurs to build companies that discover new innovations that make the world a better place—instead of awarding “short-term thinking and speculation.”

In the years leading up to 2008’s financial crisis, “too many of our brightest minds were engineering credit-default swaps,” he said.

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Kent Hoover is the Washington bureau chief for bizjournals.