Social challenges

Youth self-employment

29/11/2021 PNG

At least one-in-ten of working 20-to-29 year-olds is self-employed in six EU countries – Greece (13%), Italy (12%) and the Czech Republic (11%), Poland (10%) and Romania (10%).

Countries with higher rates of youth self-employment compared with the EU average tend to have experienced high levels of youth unemployment following the financial crisis of 2008-09 (e.g. Greece and Italy). However, the gap between youth and overall self-employment rates is wide for many countries, including those with low youth self-employment rates, such as Germany (2.7% vs. 8.0%) and Denmark (3.2% vs. 7.5%), as well as those with high youth self-employment rates, such as Greece (12.8% vs. 27.9%) and Italy (12.1% vs. 20.2%).

Exploring policy approaches to closing that gap is one way to support a resilient, long-term economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.