In the past year, the number of young directors at UK small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) has increased by more than a third, as so-called ‘millennials’ continue to rise through the ranks.
The research, which featured in Accountancy Daily earlier this week, reveals that the number of young SME directors among companies with turnovers of £25 million or less was up by 37 per cent year-on-year in 2017/18.
In total, there are now 56,000 millennial directors, up from just 41,000 recorded back in 2016/18.
According to the study, this is in part due to the fact that millennials – who are typically defined as those born between 1981 and 1996 – have largely turned towards entrepreneurism in the years since the credit crunch.
Following the financial crisis, many graduates felt more inclined to start their own businesses, the authors say.
Similarly, the rise of the so-called ‘gig economy’ has “given young university and school leavers a taste of managing their own workload,” providing them with the skills they need to start up a new business – or handle a senior role – later down the line.
The study’s authors said that in the modern age, the dream of launching a start-up business was becoming more and more realistic and attainable for young people, due to the ubiquity of appropriate skill sets and the growth of modern technologies.
They said that many of the “entry barriers” to starting a business had fallen in an age when initial start-up launch costs are falling and shared and flexible work spaces, such as WeWork and Central Working, are popping up in cities all over the UK.