Senior entrepreneurship and qualified senior unemployment

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to characterize the senior entrepreneurship context, as a solution for an unemployed qualified segment between 45 and 60 years of age, in the Northern region of Portugal, from a national and European perspective, associated to the growth trend of qualified senior unemployment in the region, based on a statistical angle and from the point of view of the motivations to become self-employed with a business creation project. This empirical study is a cross-sectional study of mixed nature, that reconciles qualitative and quantitative analysis. A questionnaire was made and applied to a sample of 1,000 individuals and seven semi-structured interviews which four focus groups were carried out. Findings allow us to conclude that the studied segment, skilled unemployed individuals between the ages of 45 and 60, is a growing segment that tends to evolve into long-term unemployment and underlines a potential reluctant entrepreneurship by necessity, i.e. a reduced motivational content of these unemployed people for the creation of their own job. The authors can conclude, in the Portuguese case, that government policies relating to taxes and bureaucracy are considered as unfavorable conditions or potentially inhibitors of senior entrepreneurship. Lastly, the authors underline the clear absence of specific support programs and measures for the promotion of entrepreneurship among the qualified senior unemployed and the authors propose an ecosystem creation regarding the specifics of the target group of the study. The study identifies a set of actions and/or orientations that could be relevant and taken into account by the decision makers. The main contribution of this paper is the better knowledge of the context and motivations for qualified senior entrepreneurship, as well as the associated personal, economic and social barriers; and the specific suggestions provided to policy makers in order to improve the context of the senior entrepreneurship.