According to Lawrence Love, ATA President: «Demonizing the self-employed businessman and the entrepreneur is damaging the entrepreneurial spirit among young Spaniards». “Spain has lost young self-employed businessmen in the last five years and yet We win self-employed people over 64 years of age. We are all doing something wrong when the culture of entrepreneurship, risk, and effort among youth is not permeating”.
In the last five years (September 2018- September 2022) RETA has lost 110,428 self-employed young people under 44 years. However, over 45 years of age, 186,621 have joined the RETA in the last five years, specifically an increase of 101,823 self-employed over 61 years of age. The RETA adds a total of 76,193 self-employed in five years.
“There are 41.3% more self-employed people over the age of 64 than five years ago. And almost 20% more self-employed in the 60 to 64 age range. Punishing the business and entrepreneurial spirit is having serious consequences among young people and our business fabric and also for the future of our self-employed ”, says Lorenzo Amor. “We are losing generations of entrepreneurs, We are losing young entrepreneurs, and it reflects that those who reach a certain age are not being replaced by young self-employed workers and that means that self-employed workers under the age of 44 are lost every year”.
If we look at as of 2022. For age, the self-employed who have grown the most this year, in percentage terms, are also those over 64 years of age and 11,588 self-employed have joined, representing an increase of 7.8%. And the self-employed are between 40 and 44 years of age those who have fallen the most so far this year with a loss of -2.8% of self-employed (see table below) followed by the decrease of -2.4% of those self-employed who are between 35 and 39 years old in Spain.
