America’s corporate chief executive officers know that the economy is strong. The stock market volatility of the past week reflects many factors — but not a weak economy or a lack of entrepreneurship.

Consider today’s employment numbers, which are expected to show that American firms created about 135,000 new jobs in July, bringing the total of payroll jobs created since the start of the jobs recovery in 2003 to more than 8 million.

If they come in as expected, these jobs numbers would underscore the economy’s fundamental strength, and would contrast starkly with the current dour mood on Wall Street, where falling stock markets in New York and elsewhere, rising oil prices, and housing woes have been competing for headlines.

According to Bear Stearns’ chief economist, David Malpass, “One factor in the market turbulence is an underestimate of the growth environment, especially the positive implications of strong global growth, and the decline in unemployment practically worldwide.”

Mr. Malpass also highlights in his latest assessment the mistaken perception that American household savings are negative. In reality, total savings are high and rising. He estimates that net household savings in financial assets are $29 trillion, not counting houses or land.

Last week’s revisions to gross domestic product, which grew at an annualized real rate, after inflation, of 3.4% in the second quarter, caused even the government’s narrow measure of the personal savings rate, disposable income minus consumption spending, to be generally positive since the fourth quarter of 2005.

Consumers spent less in the spring than in the first quarter, but exports rose, driven by strong global demand and the weak dollar. Business investment was also higher.

Arguably, an economy with a positive savings rate that is growing through rising exports and business investment is stronger than one that is growing only from increasing consumer spending. Some economists would be glad to trade slower growth of consumption for higher exports because they see exports as a sign of strength of the economy.

A professor at Dartmouth University, Andrew Bernard, in a forthcoming co-authored article in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, writes that “results from virtually every study across industries and countries confirm that high productivity precedes entry into export markets,” and that “an abundance of evidence indicates that firms entering export markets grow substantially faster in employment and output than non-exporters.”

Although residential investment declined in the spring, reflecting problems in the housing sector and subtracting 0.5% from GDP, this decline was more than offset by the less widely-reported increase in nonresidential, or commercial, investment, which added 0.8% to GDP.

With the American economy showing improved momentum, the issue for policy-makers is how to encourage entrepreneurs to continue the growth — to invest in their own firms, to start new ones, and to create jobs. A strong economy is carried on the backs of our national set of entrepreneurial companies and their leaders.

The strength of today’s economy would come as no surprise to leading business executives of the past. A fascinating new book by Todd Buchholz, “New Ideas from Dead CEOs,” shows the power of ideas and persistence. This book is a valuable guide to understanding what makes an economy grow.

Mr. Buchholz recounts how nine determined entrepreneurs, starting from nothing, built up companies that collectively are worth hundreds of billions of dollars and employ millions of workers. These CEOs transformed not only their companies, but also society. By the same logic, much of our economic growth today is attributable to a new generation of entrepreneurs, especially in finance, computers, and electronics.

Founder in California of the Bank of America, Amadeo Giannini, brought banking to the masses in the early 20th century. He started a women’s banking department — a century ago, few women and even working men had occasion to enter a bank. Mr. Giannini’s employees went to schools and signed up more than 40,000 children, future customers, for savings accounts. In 1932 his bank bought the entire $6 million issue of bonds to pay for the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Sam Walton founded the first Wal-Mart in Bentonville, Ark., in 1962, and the second in 1964. Initially, people sneered at him because he was locating his huge stores in the suburban areas rather than in cities. His focus on cutting costs and efficient supply chains made Wal-Mart a formidable competitor. According to McKinsey & Co., Wal-Mart innovations were responsible for more than 10% of America’s productivity increase in the 1990s.

Mr. Buchholz also portrays Mary Kay and Estée Lauder, who made fine cosmetics widely available; Thomas Watson, Sr. and Jr., who founded and developed IBM; Ray Kroc, whose McDonald’s restaurants produced consistently high-quality hamburgers; Akio Morita, who brought portable transistor radios to America; David Sarnoff, who founded RCA; and Walt Disney, whose enterprise grew from cartoon movies to playgrounds on three continents.

The government was not always helpful to these entrepreneurs. Established, old-line bankers and regulators tried to stop Mr. Giannini from pursuing branch banking, which created more competition. Mr. Walton brought lower prices across America, but today Wal-Mart gets attacked as a gouging robber baron, even though he always had a modest standard of living.

Entrepreneurs today face a stark choice between the limitless hope of a growing economy, and the constraining fear that Congress might stop growth by taxing and regulating the economy into recession. At times it seems our government is more concerned with obscure elements of society and our environment, such as the spotted owl, rather than ensuring the success of entrepreneurs in the economy.

A remarkable characteristic of Mr. Buchholz’s CEO Hall of Fame is that many enterprises thrived despite strikingly unhelpful government policies. Let’s hope our government is wiser today.

Ms. Furchtgott-Roth, a former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor, is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.