Entrepreneur Numbers Point To Change In Work, Not Economy

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July 21, 2009

Image Credit: Getty Images, Mareen Fischinger/Flickr

The Daily Telegraph has explored a report by the UK’s Barclay Bank which indicates surprise that the number of small businesses in the UK has remained fairly steady during the recession. They say that unlike a Thatcher-era recession where small business bombed, the number of new small business owners seems to be matching the number of ones going out of business.

The Telegraph suggests that this is a sign of a strengthening economy but I’d have to disagree – this is a sign of the changing way we will work. I’ve argued before that the jobs we have will move from a permanent to a freelance basis, and that the economic downturn will accelerate that shift. People who find themselves out of work (and with little hope of getting a new job) are arming themselves with digital tools that leverage the near zero costs of running a micro-business through the web. The Telegraph does have a couple paragraph in their article that hints at this:

The Barclays team points to a variety of reasons behind the continuing upsurge ranging from a switch to self-employment by people losing their jobs to a “broader acceptance of entrepreneurship”. Mr Frankish [a Barclays economist] says: “Being an entrepreneur for a lot of people has become more normal. It is an option. It is not seen as an exceptional thing.”

He feels the trend could mean that the number of high value businesses has dwindled over the last year, replaced by less ambitious traders simply trying to earn enough to live from.

Telegraph: “Britain’s entrepreneurs unaffected by recession”