While the gender gap has closed slightly over the past decade, it persists according to many metrics such as self-employment rates and business creation rates. There are also gender differences, on average, in the nature of self-employment and entrepreneurship activities. This includes sector of operation, likelihood of creating additional jobs and more. One explanation for these gaps are differences in motivations and aspirations between men and women, as well as differences in barriers faced. This chapter presents updated data and trends for European Union Member States and OECD countries.

The scale and nature of immigrant entrepreneurship has changed dramatically over the past two decades. For example, the share of immigrants among the self-employed has more than doubled in the European Union. At the same time, there is a small but growing body of evidence suggesting that contributions to innovation and job creation by immigrant entrepreneurs are increasing. Policy makers need to be aware of these trends so that policies and schemes for immigrant entrepreneurship are adjusted accordingly. This chapter presents comparable self-employment indicators for immigrants across countries, including self-employment rates, the proportion of self-employed immigrants with employees, sector and occupation. These data are complemented with insights gained from country-specific research on immigrant entrepreneurship.

Nearly half of young people indicate that they would prefer to be an entrepreneur relative to working as an employees and more than 40% of university students report that they plan to become entrepreneurs within five years of their graduation. Despite this high level of interest in entrepreneurship, very few young people are working on start-ups. This gap is due to a number of important barriers such as a lack of experience and skills, low levels of collateral and savings and under-developed professional networks. Nonetheless, start-up rates among youth are high in some countries such as Estonia and Latvia. This chapter presents data on self-employment and entrepreneurship activities by youth, including self-employment rates, the proportion involved in starting a business and the characteristics of these activities. Data are presented for European Union Member States and OECD countries along with the averages for the European Union and the OECD.

Overall, self-employment rates increase with age. About 18% of working people aged 50 to 64 years old are self-employed, about 4 percentage points above the overall average. This share increases to 39% for those 65-69 years old and 52% for those 70-74 years old. Moreover, about one-third of these businesses employ others. This chapter presents data and trends on self-employment and entrepreneurship activities by seniors for European Union Member States and OECD countries. It also discusses barriers to entrepreneurship and policy approaches used to support seniors in business creation and self-employment.

Governments have long-supported business creation schemes for the unemployed as a route back into work and many of these schemes were expanded in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. There are examples of large and successful schemes but only a small proportion of unemployed people in the European Union seek to return to work through self‑employment. This chapter presents data on the proportion of unemployed people who seek to return to work through self-employment, as well as the proportion that are successful at transitioning from unemployment to self-employment. Data on the unemployed are presented at both the European Union (EU) and EU Member State levels. Selected OECD countries are covered to the extent possible.