This country profile highlights recent policy developments and current policy issues related to inclusive entrepreneurship. It also presents self-employment and entrepreneurship indicators for women, youth, seniors and immigrants for the Slovak Republic and benchmarks these indicators against the European Union average.
The Missing Entrepreneurs 2019
Policies for Inclusive Entrepreneurship
Abstract
The self-employment rate for youth was above the European Union (EU) average in 2018 (10.0% vs. 6.5%), while the rates for women and seniors were approximately equal to the EU average. However, the proportion of youth that are self-employed has decreased slightly over the past decade while it increased for seniors. The proportion of the population that reports being involved in starting and managing new businesses was above the EU average for the period 2014-18, including for women (8.0% vs. 4.9%), youth (11.0% vs. 7.7%) and seniors (8.6% vs. 4.4%). While many of these entrepreneurship activities were started due to a lack of employment opportunities, the proportion that expects to create at least 19 jobs over the next five years was above the EU average for this period. This was especially true for women and youth entrepreneurs.
Developing entrepreneurship skills throughout society has been a policy priority in recent years. This includes embedding entrepreneurship in secondary and tertiary education, developing hands-on entrepreneurship training for youth (e.g. Young Entrepreneurs Association of Slovakia), offering entrepreneurship training for the unemployed through employment offices and more broadly by the Slovak Business Agency. This is complemented by coaching and mentoring programmes, but these are currently largely targeted at youth and offered in large cities or through higher education institutions.
Support for women’s entrepreneurship has been strengthened in recent years. An important regulatory change was made in March 2017 (Amendment No. 40/2017) to Act No. 448/2008 on Social Services, which is expected to facilitate access to childcare for women entrepreneurs by relaxing the conditions for using public childcare. In addition, the Slovak Business Agency is implementing the international project “Cross EU Women Business Angels”, which is co-funded by the European Union. Launched in March 2018, the project aims to support the growth and development of new and early-stage businesses run by women through investments by female angel investors.
This profile is based on a recent country assessment report, which can be found at: www.oecd.org/cfe/leed/inclusive-entrepreneurship.htm.
Notes: The self-employment rate is defined as the number of self-employed people (15-64 years old) divided by the number of people in employment. The TEA rate is the proportion of adults (18-64 years old) involved in setting up a business or managing a business that is less than 42 months old. Necessity entrepreneurship is defined as entrepreneurship activities that were launched because there were no other options in the labour market. Early-stage entrepreneurs are those who are in the process of setting up a business or managing a business that is less than 42 months old. The EU average in Panels D-F excludes Czech Republic and Malta for the period 2014-18 and Malta for the period 2009-13.
Sources: Panels A and B: Eurostat (2019), Labour Force Survey, https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/lfs/data/database; Panel C: Eurostat (2018), Self-employment, Labour Force Survey ad-hoc module, https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/lfs/data/database; Panels D-F: Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (2019), Special tabulations of the GEM survey 2014-18.