Record number of Gen Z businesses planned this year

A new poll reveals that one in seven Britons aged 18-24 plan to start their own business in 2021. School and university graduates  are “rejecting job market to take back control of their futures from Covid”.

The country’s young people are taking matters into their own hands, a new major poll released today reveals.

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The poll of more than 2,000 British adults shows that one in seven young people (aged 18-24, generally referred to as Generation Z) in the UK plans to start their own business in 2021.

If they carry out their plans, this would result in a record-busting 800,000 new Gen Z businesses this year. Between 2018 and 2019, 390,000 businesses were started in the UK across all age groups.

According to Ed Surman, Managing Director of Tewkesbury-headquartered finance and business advisers Mushroombiz, which commissioned the poll, the results show “that young people leaving school and university are rejecting the shrinking job market to take back control of their futures from COVID-19.”

The government's Office of Budget Responsibility estimates that the UK unemployment rate will peak at 7.5 per cent in the middle of 2021 – representing about 2.6 million people out of work – up from about four per cent before the pandemic struck.

According to Ed: “This reality has forced many young people to re-evaluate their futures and become their own boss.” He says the poll backs up what he has seen: “A huge uptick in the number of tech start-ups, passion projects and side hustles started in university dorm rooms in the latter half of 2020.”

As people adjusted to the new normal of the pandemic, the number of new companies being created in the UK compared with 2019 soared in the second half of 2020, according to the Office for National Statistics.  July 2020 set a new record with more than 81,000 businesses registered in the UK.

Mushroom, which also has offices in Birmingham and London,  was set up by Mother and Son duo Tina and Ed to address a massive gap in service quality for SMEs. With combined backgrounds in managing and selling companies, financial leadership, and top tier law firms, the team at Mushroombiz aims to give the kind of service big blue chip companies receive to the UK's thriving SME sector.

By combining legal services, accounting and HR and all sorts of solutions in between, Mushroombiz offers a more holistic approach to professional advice that they say isn't provided by any accountancy firm, law firm or other advisory firm individually.

Mushroombiz now supports over 140 businesses across the UK with every single one of their clients surviving the economic fallout of 2020.

The poll, carried out by Yonder (formerly named Populus) also found that around one in five young people aged 18-24 considered starting their own business for the first time last year.

The new polling also revealed that 13 per cent of Britons would start their own business if they had more spare time, while 20 per cent would become their own boss if they had more money.

Notably, the poll shows that across all age groups twice as many men (nine per cent) as women (four per cent) plan to start their own business this year.

The news comes in spite of underlying concerns for the UK economy, with the poll revealing a majority of Britons (57 per cent) are not confident in the country’s economic prospects for 2021, with just under half not confident in it over the next five years.

The poll was commissioned by Mushroombiz ahead of its annual conference on the future of business in the UK.