Are Millennial Entrepreneurs an Endangered Breed?

 The young folk of America stormed into the 21st century. They’ve occupied Wall Street, they’ve protested police brutality, they nationalized same-sex marriage. These restless contenders of equality champion themselves as actuators of change, masters of their fate. These optimistic, progressive, and rebellious youth have earned a fitting name for themselves: the millennials!

Anyone born born between 1982 and 2000  is a millennial. According to the US Census Bureau in 2015, millennials are 83.1 million in number and comprise over a quarter of this nation’s population. As of 2016, members of this generation could be anywhere between the ages of 16-34 with 25 being right in the middle of this range.

And the ambitions of the millennials? Half of workers in their 20s who do not currently own a business would like to do so in the future according to a nation-wide study conducted by the University of Phoenix School of Business survey in 2014.

The same cross-sectional study indicates age plays a factor in the desire to be self-employed: only 35% of workers in their 40s, 26% of workers in their 50s, and 17% of workers in their 60s still would like to own a startup.

And yet, the data shows the exact opposite of what we’d expect to be an explosion of enthusiastic millennial entrepreneurs. The US Small Business Association published a study in 2016 reporting the proportion of entrepreneurs is decreasing per generation. In 2014, 8.3% of Baby Boomers (born 1944-1962) report self-employment, while the same only goes for  7.6% of Generation X (born 1963-1981), and less than 2% of millennials.

The US SBA also suggests in their study that entrepreneurship for millennials will remain relatively low for decades. Although, the US SBA notes we have yet to see the full impact of millennial entrepreneurs, as they were the youngest group in their dataset.

However, millennials cannot even use their youth as an excuse; the Kauffman report which has partnered with the US census bureau reports the percentage of entrepreneurs ages 20-34 went from over a third in 1996, to a bit under a quarter in 2014.

Image courtesy of Kauffman Report Index.

So as Forbes contributor Jeff Cornwall asks, what happened to all those millennial entrepreneurs?

Perhaps it’s just too early to write off the millennials. In a 2009 survey conducted by the Kauffman report, 75.4% of entrepreneurs worked for other companies for over six years before creating their startups. It will take two years for the last of the millennials to enter adulthood, and another 2-8 years before they complete a college degree. Given another decade or two, the millennials could still become the surge of entrepreneurs America has been waiting for.

The University of Phoenix survey was a cross-sectional study, which takes data from several different age groups at the same time to compare with each other. We won’t know for sure if the drive to start a business decreases with age until a longitudinal study which  will keep track of the same members of the sample population through the following decades is published. If the millennials transform their optimism and drive for enterprise into companies of their own, America could still be a bustling habitat for small businesses.

In the words Forbes contributor and journalist, Edmund Ingham, “I’ve always believed entrepreneurs are a breed, not an age bracket… It all goes back to that age-old question I guess - are they born, or made?” So as for the future of millennial entrepreneurs, we’ll have to wait and see.