They’d rather strike out on their own. In fact, nearly 71 percent of the 1,474 youth who participated in a 2006 Junior Achievement survey said they wanted to be self-employed sometime in their lives—up by 6.9 percentage points since 2004. Credit the opportunities that come from growing up in a technological society, experts said. That’s not to say there haven’t been downtrends throughout the years.
Reasons for the trend: About 3.9 percent of adults ages 20-34 started a business in 2005 and 2006, according to the Missouri-based Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation’s 2006 Index of Entrepreneurial Activity, up slightly from the 3.7 percent who took the plunge in 2000-2001—but down from 4.3 percent in 1996-1997.
Not many other national studies track the age of entrepreneurs, but experts agree that an increasing number of startups have young people at the helm.