Do small and medium-sized enterprises indeed play a major role in the creation of new jobs and the reduction of poverty in developing and emerging countries? To answer these questions, we have performed a literature review of recent empirical studies. Our literature review shows that there is still too little empirical evidence available to either support or deny this claim. One the one hand, empirical evidence indicates that the role of SMEs is considerable when compared to the role of large enterprises. On the other hand, however, these comparisons are not yet complete: we do not really know to which extent other sources of employment also contribute to the employment growth in countries. Based on these findings, one could argue that we know that SMEs play an important role in the creation of new jobs, but that we just don’t know how important.