One in five young Britons now founding, as graduate vacancies fall 43%
The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor puts youth entrepreneurial activity at a record 19.6 per cent. Adzuna counted 7,826 advertised graduate roles in September, down from 13,754 a year earlier.
Nearly one in five people aged 18 to 24 in the UK was starting or running a business in 2025. That is the highest level recorded by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, whose UK report was published on 27 October.
A summary of the findings by the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Entrepreneurship puts the youth rate at 19.6 per cent.
Across all adults, early-stage entrepreneurial activity rose from 12.0 per cent to 16.8 per cent in 2025. According to Warwick Business School, that is the highest since GEM records began in 1999, with young people and women driving the rise.
The share of new entrepreneurs reporting growth ambitions more than doubled over three years, to 35 per cent.
The same research ranks the UK's entrepreneurial ecosystem 37th globally, down from 29th.
Professor Mark Hart of Warwick Business School, the UK lead for GEM, presented the findings to MPs during a Commons committee inquiry into entrepreneurship and business.
The other half of the picture is the disappearing entry-level job. Jobs site Adzuna recorded 7,826 advertised graduate vacancies in September, 43 per cent fewer than the 13,754 it counted a year earlier.
Andrew Hunter, co-founder of Adzuna, said: "The balance of power in the hiring market has shifted further toward employers."
A Survation survey of 1,001 UK senior business leaders, carried out for the Work Foundation at Lancaster University and published in August, found 36 per cent of employers had cut entry-level jobs for 16 to 24-year-olds over the previous 12 months. That figure was 48 per cent among medium-sized employers and 46 per cent among large ones, against 24 per cent among small firms.
Some 43 per cent of employers said investment in AI or automation had reduced the number of entry-level roles, rising to 60 per cent among large employers.
The Work Foundation said more than one million 16 to 24-year-olds were not in education, employment or training, the highest number since 2013.
Borrowing follows the same curve. Loans to Gen Z founders through the government-backed Start Up Loans programme rose from 830 in 2020 to 1,929 in 2025, an increase of 132 per cent, according to the British Business Bank. Their share of the programme's loans went from 7.7 per cent to 17 per cent, and the annual value from £7.2m to £21.2m.
The pattern is not confined to Britain. Babson College's annual survey found at least 23 per cent of Americans aged 18 to 34 running a business or side hustle, up from 19 per cent in 2021, while payroll provider Gusto found more than 70 per cent of Gen Z entrepreneurs who started businesses in 2025 used AI to build them.
For founders already trading, the numbers cut two ways. The pool of people willing to join an early-stage company instead of a graduate scheme is larger than it has been, because the graduate scheme is advertising 5,928 fewer roles than last September.
The competition for customers, accelerator places and Start Up Loans money is larger too, and the support around it is rated worse than it was: 37th, not 29th.