Almost one in four “young” companies is missing the appeal compared to ten years ago. The activities conducted by people under 35 – or with a prevalence of young people under 35 in governance – registered in the Business Register, were 697 thousand in 2011 and have moved on to 541mila a fine 2020 (-22.4%). A trend that affects the whole national territory: Lombardy, for example, goes from over 95 thousand youth enterprises to 74 thousand, Lazio from 64 thousand to 56 thousand. The South is also losing ground, where the incidence of businesses owned by young people is traditionally higher: in Sicily, for example, they have decreased by almost 16,000 in ten years. The picture emerges from the analysis of Unioncamere-Infocamere for Il Sole 24 Ore del Lunedì.
Attention, the companies that leave the stock of youth companies have not necessarily closed their doors: a part, due to the growth of owners and administrators, sooner or later comes out of the “youth” category. However, the fact remains that ten years ago youth businesses represented 10% of the entire universe of companies registered in the Register (6.1 million), while today they amount to 8.9%. The demographic dynamics certainly weighs, with the progressive decline in the birth rate in Italy: the population aged between 18 and 34, therefore the base of potential young entrepreneurs, decreased by 8% from 2011 to 2022. But this is not enough to explain a decline in youth businesses of over 22 per cent.
Loading…
The diffusion index of these companies – that is the ratio between their number and the population aged 18-34 – fell from 61.5% in 2011 to 51.9% in 2020, decreasing on average by one point for each year of the year. decade.
In Lombardy and Lazio one third of the losses
In 2020, however, they tried 86,146 young people. This is the number of new youth businesses registered in the Register in the year of the pandemic, down by 18% compared to 2019. “The pandemic crisis – explained by Infocamere – has also made itself felt on these companies, of strategic interest due to the potential of recovery of our economy: new youth enterprises were 18,900 fewer than in 2019, with a negative variation of 18%, whereas for other enterprises the loss was -16.9%. This reduction in youth start-ups concerns in particular two important regions, such as Lombardy and Lazio, which alone account for almost a third of the losses ».
If we look at the total of the 292 thousand companies registered in 2020, those of young people represent 29.4 per cent. They are mainly sole proprietorships, with a number of employees that for over 92% of the activities does not exceed five people.