Potential for self-employment among jobseekers : empirical evidence on the basis of the microcensus

Abstract

"In this paper the question as to the determinants of the search for self-employment instead of a job in dependent employment is analysed. Among other things it is tested whether in the group of jobseekers, the unemployed are more likely than the economically active or other non-active people to seek work on a self-employed basis and in what way the determinants of the search for a self-employed activity instead of an employed one have developed in the first half of the 1990s. The study is based on the individual data of the microcensuses of 1991, 1993 and 1995 and thus permits representative empirical statements concerning the extent and the socio-economic structure of the potential of people willing to become self-employed. The study shows that the number of people seeking a self-employed activity first fell and then rose again in the period under observation. In 1995 more than 5.3 million people in Germany were seeking a new job, 177,000 or 3% of whom were seeking a self-employed activity. The unemployed make up an increasing share of the number of jobseekers wishing to become self-employed. One result of the econometric analysis is that the socio-economic structure of the people seeking a self-employed activity is in some cases closer to the structure of the self-employed than to that of those in dependent employment. Thus for example more men than women and more master craftsmen than journeymen were seeking a self-employed activity. Furthermore it is not possible to reject the hypothesis that in 1995 there were no longer any differences between the economically active and the unemployed of the same age, gender and vocational training as regards the desire to become self-employed. In contrast, two and four years previously the tendency towards becoming self-employed was clearly lower in the group of unemployed than in the group of the economically active." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))

Cite article

Pfeiffer, F. (1999): Existenzgründerpotenziale unter Arbeitsuchenden: Empirische Evidenz auf der Basis des Mikrozensus. In: Mitteilungen aus der Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung, Vol. 32, No. 3, p. 300-330.