By Heather Cameron

Entrepreneurs are often portrayed as bright young things launching start-ups, but does the reality of start-up demographics paint a different picture?

Changing demographics

The UK has certainly witnessed a boom in young entrepreneurship in recent years – the number of under-35s starting businesses in the UK rose by more than 70% between 2006 and 2014.

However, recent research suggests that the boom in young entrepreneurs may be waning. According to research commissioned by Google earlier this year, the majority of young people are “not interested” in starting a business, with four out of five young people surveyed saying they would rather work for a well-established company. Particular concerns were also highlighted over risk and instability.

The UK is, however, still ranked in the top 10 countries with the most favourable conditions for entrepreneurs to start and scale new businesses. And official data suggests that the UK continues to see record numbers of business start-ups, exceeding 600,000 in 2015, up on the previous two years.

So if it isn’t the younger generation heading up this record number, who is it?

‘Olderpreneurs’

Despite media coverage of the entrepreneurial spirit of the younger generation, the average age of an entrepreneur in the UK has actually been estimated at 47.

And according to the latest data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), the most notable increase in entrepreneurial activity has been amongst the over 50 age group.

Referred to as ‘olderpreneurs’, this group could arguably be the new start-up generation.

There has been a 46.5% increase in freelancers over 50 since 2008, an age group that accounts for 72% of all self-employed people. According to official statistics there are around 1.8 million self-employed people over the age of 50 in the UK.

With an ageing population that is also becoming healthier, perhaps this shouldn’t be such a surprise.

Motivations

Motivations for people starting up their own businesses include redundancy, retirement, family circumstances, growing older and life stage milestones.

As life expectancy increases, many don’t want to give up work at the traditional retirement age, as they still lead active lives. Retirement has been cited as an ‘important tipping point’ for some, with the main motivation not to make money or grow their business, but rather something to keep them occupied or earn some extra money while doing something relatively easy.

The introduction of pension freedoms last year has also led to more over 50s using their pensions to fund new business ventures. The over 55s cashed in more than £4.7billion of their pensions in the first six months after pension freedoms were introduced.

Economic impact

And such activity is good news for the economy. It has been suggested that if the employment rate of 50-64 year olds matched that of the 35-49 age group, the UK economy could be boosted by £88 billion.

Older entrepreneurs have also been shown to be more successful than their younger counterparts. It has been highlighted that businesses run by owner-managers over 50 drive up revenues at their companies three-and-a-half times faster than GDP growth – 11.5% compared with 3.1%.

And older entrepreneurs create jobs at a rate more than seven times faster than the UK economic average.

It has also been suggested by the Prince’s Initiative for Mature Enterprise (PRIME) that start-up failure rates in this age bracket are remarkably low. It recently revealed that 95% of its members were still in business a year or more after starting up, compared to the national average of just 66%.

Final thoughts

A significant percentage of the UK population is past retirement age. And the number of people aged 50 to State Pension age is expected to rise by 3.2 million, while the number aged 16 to 49 will have reduced by 200,000 over the next 10 years.

As a result, keeping this group economically engaged surely has to be a priority.

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If you found this article interesting, you may also like to read our previous articles on entrepreneurship and self-employment. 

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