For many young Europeans, self-employment represents more than the possibility of earning money independently. Research points to autonomy, flexibility, control over working time and the freedom to pursue personal interests as important motivations. This does not mean young people are rejecting companies. It suggests that they increasingly compare traditional employment with other ways of organising their working lives.
Why more young Europeans want to work for themselves
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Written by Benoit Vancauwenberghe, leading expert on Generation Z & Alpha in Europe
Nearly four in ten young Europeans say they would rather be self-employed than work for someone else. Yet only a small minority actually make the leap. That gap tells us something important about Gen Z: entrepreneurship is not simply becoming more attractive. The boundary between being an employee and working for yourself is shifting.
The entrepreneurial dream is bigger than the reality
Something interesting is happening among young Europeans. According to the OECD, 39% of Europeans aged 15 to 30 say they would prefer to be self-employed rather than work as an employee. Yet only around 7% were actually self-employed in the latest comparable data. Eurostat shows that 2.06 million Europeans aged 20 to 29 were self-employed in 2025. That is significant, but it still falls far short of suggesting that an entire generation is abandoning employment.
The interesting story is therefore not that Gen Z is suddenly becoming a generation of entrepreneurs. It is that working for yourself has become a credible alternative in their mental career map. For previous generations, entrepreneurship was often the exception. You first looked for a job. Starting your own business came later, if ever. Today, a young graduate can consider both almost simultaneously.
Why does working for yourself look so attractive?
Money is part of the story, but it is not the main one. European research shows that young people are particularly attracted to self-employment because of independence, the freedom to choose when and where they work, and the opportunity to pursue their own interests. That language should sound familiar to anyone studying Gen Z. Questions about control over time, decisions, location, and the role work plays in life are also increasingly asked by young employees within companies.
Perhaps entrepreneurship is attractive not only because young people want to build businesses. Perhaps it offers a version of work that appears closer to how they want work to function.
Self-employment does not necessarily mean building the next unicorn
When older generations hear “entrepreneur”, they may imagine somebody resigning, raising capital, and creating a company. For younger people, the border is much less clear. Freelancing, creating content, selling a service online, running an e-commerce project, consulting alongside a job, or developing a small business can all sit somewhere between employment and traditional entrepreneurship.
A young person can be an employee on Monday and work on their own project in the evening. They do not necessarily have to choose an identity immediately. That makes entrepreneurship easier to test. The decision is no longer always an employee or an entrepreneur. Increasingly, it can be: how much of my working life do I want to own myself?
Technology has lowered the entrance fee
Twenty years ago, starting even a small company often required significant infrastructure. You needed somebody to build your website, design your identity, provide accounting support, offer marketing expertise, and sometimes provide office space. Today, one person with a laptop can do an extraordinary amount alone.
Generative AI pushes that change further. A young entrepreneur can research a market, develop ideas, write content, create presentations, analyze competitors, and automate parts of administration with tools that either did not exist or were prohibitively expensive a decade ago. This does not make entrepreneurship easy, but the perceived barrier to entry has changed dramatically. It is easier to try. And once something becomes easier to try, it becomes easier to imagine.
Gen Z has not suddenly fallen in love with risk
This is perhaps the most interesting contradiction. Deloitte’s 2026 global survey found a generation that is actually seeking more stability, not less. Financial pressure remains high, and many Gen Z respondents say financial constraints have caused them to delay major decisions, including starting a business.
So why would entrepreneurship appeal to a generation looking for stability? Perhaps because the definition of risk is changing. For decades, the equation was simple: employment meant security; entrepreneurship meant risk. That equation is less obvious today.
Young Europeans have grown up watching restructurings, economic crises, inflation, temporary contracts, rapidly changing skills, and now AI transforming parts of the labor market. A permanent employer can still provide enormous stability, but depending entirely on one organization no longer automatically feels risk-free. For some young people, having several options, several skills, or even several sources of income may feel like another form of security. That does not make them risk-loving. It may make them risk-diversifying.
Europe has an entrepreneurship gap
There is a reality check, however. Wanting to work for yourself and actually doing it are very different things. The European Commission and OECD describe a significant gap between entrepreneurial ambition and entrepreneurial activity. Around four in ten young Europeans express a preference for entrepreneurship, but only a small minority are actively building a business.
The reasons are remarkably practical: access to finance, limited professional networks, insufficient knowledge about how to start, and administrative complexity. There are also large differences between European countries. Culture, labor markets, social protection, and access to capital all shape how realistic self-employment feels.
The important European story is therefore not simply growing entrepreneurial ambition. It is the gap between wanting autonomy and being able to afford it.
The biggest competitor for employers may be changing
Traditionally, an employer competed with other employers. If your talented 25-year-old left, they probably went to another company. That is no longer the only possibility. They can freelance, build something alongside their job, become a creator, join a start-up, sell expertise directly, or move between these models over time.
That does not mean companies should panic every time an employee has a side project. It means employers need to understand what makes these alternatives attractive. If young people associate working independently with ownership, flexibility, and control, the useful question is not how to stop them from becoming entrepreneurs. It is what employment can still offer that makes choosing an organization attractive.
Perhaps the biggest competitor for employers is no longer another employer. It may be the increasingly credible possibility of working for yourself.
Conclusion: The border is becoming porous
Gen Z is not abandoning employment. The traditional job is clearly not disappearing. What is changing is the number of alternatives around it.
For a growing number of young Europeans, employment, freelancing, entrepreneurship, and side projects are no longer completely separate career categories. They can coexist, follow each other, and overlap. The question for young people is becoming less “What job will I have?” and more “How do I want to build my working life?”
For employers, that creates a different competitive landscape. Young talent is no longer comparing one company with another company. It is also comparing employment with the possibility of building something of its own.
Q&A
There is clear entrepreneurial interest, but the gap between aspiration and action remains large. Around four in ten young Europeans say they would prefer self-employment, while only a much smaller share actually work for themselves or actively build a business. The important shift may therefore be less about the number of entrepreneurs and more about entrepreneurship becoming a credible career option much earlier in life.
The main barriers remain practical. European research highlights access to finance, limited professional networks, lack of business knowledge and administrative complexity. There are also significant differences between countries because taxation, social protection, access to capital and labour-market conditions influence how realistic self-employment feels.
The lesson is not that companies need to turn every employee into an entrepreneur. It is that employers should pay attention to what attracts young people to independent work: ownership, autonomy, flexibility and a clearer connection between decisions and outcomes. If organisations want to remain attractive, they may need to create more room for young employees to influence projects, make decisions and feel genuine ownership over their work.
Want to understand what Gen Z is changing next?
The growing appeal of working independently is not simply another Gen Z trend. It is one more signal that the relationship between young people, employers and careers is becoming less fixed.
For leaders, the question is not whether everyone under 30 will become an entrepreneur. Most will not. The more useful question is what the attraction of entrepreneurship reveals about what young people increasingly want from work: more ownership, more autonomy, and more influence over the way their working lives are built.
These are the shifts I explore with leaders and organizations through my keynotes, research, and work at 20something.
They are also at the heart of my upcoming book, The Gen Z Shift: Why Today’s Leaders Keep Acting on the Wrong Signals, launching in English on 24 September 2026.
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