Enterprise Week, or Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) as it is now called, is with us once again. Judging by the launch at Google’s London HQ on Monday 15th November, this annual festival of enterprise is quickly reverting to being a youth-only affair, despite the new all-embracing title. There was not a single mention of older entrepreneurs, and the stress was put on enterprise education in schools – hardly relevant to the growing number of workless over 50s.

It got worse. Dragon’s Den judge Peter Jones is chairman of Enterprise UK, which runs GEW in this country. In his speech he lamented the fact that in the UK we do not have a “do or die” culture, and that here enterprise is a choice, not a necessity. Well tell that to a 54 year old who has just been made redundant! Unlike many young people a redundant 54 year old is unlikely to have a parent they can go and live with when times are financially tough.

The next Dragon to speak also eventually parted company with reality, but it took a bit longer. Doug Richard remarked that the relevance of capital to a business start-up was diminishing, as often less money was required – and that it was not the job of banks to fund a new business anyway. Rather the cash should come from family, friends and equity – and even fools willing to invest.

There is an interesting and even witty observation here about the role of banks – they are not the place budding entrepreneurs are likely to find support. Unfortunately the alternatives suggested by Doug are not available to everyone – and particularly not to many of the over 50s who have been out of work for any length of time. Our experience at PRIME is that such people do often need to raise some capital before they can start-up, but their networks of family friends and fools can be severely diminished by the experience of unemployment. Their remaining contacts can often be in the same cash-strapped boat themselves.

Equity capital is not generally available for very small businesses, but even if it were, would a private investor take on a fifty-something necessity entrepreneur who has been workless for twelve months or more? It’s not very likely.

So it’s been a very disappointing beginning to Global Entrepreneurship Week if you happen to have been born earlier than 1960. Let’s hope it improves.

On a more positive note, Matt Brittin, MD of Google UK said that their research showed that a Small or Medium Enterprise using the Internet grows four times faster than a small business that does not use the Internet. The Internet is one of the factors bringing the cost of starting a business down. Google’s own Getting British Business Online campaign (a joint initiative with Enterprise UK, BT and numerous other partners which PRIME also has been backing over at PRIME Business Club) has made a useful contribution by offering free web sites to small firms.

This is a much more useful initiative than many of the well-meaning computer-literacy projects aimed explicitly at older people. These have a regrettable tendency to focus on IT for older people drawn from a sepia-tinted world of stereotypes, who only seem to be interested in things like chatting with their grandchildren – rather than in IT for making money. It’s the latter that many of today’s grandparents (many in their 40s, 50s and 60s) could actually do with some help on.

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I was asked to be an “expert” on a BBC Radio Scotland call-in programme on pensions and retirement. I was there to talk about finding an income by starting your own business. I suspect there was a feeling that starting your own business was a way of the retired developing a satisfying life style, but the very articulate callers made it clear that poor pensions, despite a lifetime of payments, was a major gripe.

My fellow expert, Dan Hyde, the pensions reporter on www.thisismoney.co.uk, found himself, against his better judgement, defending the pensions industry. My other co-expert, Frances Fay (www.francesfay.co.uk), author of the Good Retirement Guide found herself under attack with the familiar line “It’s alright for you”. I was luckier thanks to a jaunty octogenarian who had created his own business driving trucks around and was clearly loving it.

But just when you leave the bus-stop three buses going to your destination pass you by. Immediately after the programme three pieces of research on pensions self-presented on my computer screen.
The first was reported in the Mature Times. Retirement specialist Partnership reported that 77 per cent of all the annuities they dealt with were for pension pots of around £30,000. This would buy £40 per week to top up the state pension of £97.65 (assuming you were entitled to it all – many women now in the 50s are not). This is roughly a quarter of the UK average male and female wage of £500 per week. No wonder the callers to BBC Radio Scotland complained!

But then came Ernst & Young’s report for the 2020 Public Service Trust at the RSA entitled “The Deficit: A longer Term View” http://www.2020publicservicestrust.org/publications/
Basically they were saying that an ageing population along with the cost of climate change and three other public expenditure drivers would ensure that the UK had an unsustainable budget deficit. If I understood the argument, the cost of state pensions and welfare for an ageing population, alongside the other public expenditure drivers, would mean that the UK had to borrow more and more from the money markets because we would not be able to meet the budget deficit from higher taxes or public expenditure cuts. The message is that unless we start to make difficult choices, “we’re doomed”.

Then up pops a message from the International Longevity Centre with a research review on the future of retirement (http://www.ilcuk.org.uk/). The review reported on a survey of 280 people aged 50 – 69, finding that of those above SPA (state pension age) and still working, one in three was self-employed. However only 56 per cent of the self-employed had a pension compared to 72 per cent of those who had been or were employees. What is clear is that the self-employed retire much later. This accords with PRIME’s own anecdotal evidence.
What do we make of all this? Well in my view the chances of improved pensions over the next decade or so are just about zilch. If anything there will be continued pressure to keep the state pension as low as possible. Just raising the retirement age is not going to help – already almost one person in three between the ages of 50 and SPA is workless. Pretending people are able to work longer is a self-delusion.

As a nation we need to change our view of older people and their contribution to the labour market. If we want to help older people to continue to be active in the labour market, increase individual and national wealth and reduce the cost of an ageing population, we just have to invest in self-employment support for older people.

The manifest season is upon us. And the last few weeks seems to have been alive with enterprise manifestos. None of them from a political party – but all of them about enterprise.

Here are some examples.

The Genesis Senate – Britain’s Economic Revival through micro, small and and medium-sized businesses

SFEDI (The Small Firms Enterprise Development Initiative) – Making self employment and micro enterprise a viable income opportunity for all

NFEA (National Federation of Enterprise Agencies) – Enterprise, the Economy and Society

And there are more.

What they all have in common is a view that enterprise will be critical to coming out of the recession, and start-up support, advice and mentoring should be available to a far wider range of people than is currently the case. They all want to see enterprise as an equal and integral part of Welfare to Work and better advertising of enterprise opportunities in Jobcentre Plus. And they all want to see finance to start a business available to a wider range of people.

Well, PRIME has been pre-empting the enterprise manifestos.

We now have a PRIME 50+ self-employment flyer in every Jobcentre Plus in England and Scotland, and now over one third of our enquiries are from people reading about PRIME and self-employment in Jobcentre Plus.

We have a sub-contract or agreement with a major contractor in every Flexible New Deal area in England and Scotland under the first phase and we have been working hard to ensure we are in every area in the second phase. We are currently awaiting the announcement on the second phase major contractors. This means for the over 50s, self-employment and enterprise will be a key option in Welfare the Work.

We recently launched our mentoring scheme for people just starting out on their enterprise journey in Bristol, Newcastle and Belfast. We have worked closely with Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs to train volunteer mentors and they are available now. We will be adding new areas as we roll out the scheme across the country.

And yes, we have the PRIME-Zopa olderpreneur loan scheme.

All the parties are busy telling us how they will get people back into employment and off the dole queue. They have to realise that creating the jobs comes first, and that means putting enterprise first. Without a growth in new businesses, and therefore in new jobs, the best laid welfare to work plans are doomed to failure. So the issues raised in the enterprise manifestos need to be given pride of place in each political party manifesto.

I wonder if they will.

In all the events and reports on worklessness that have come out over the last couple of weeks youth unemployment is always the central theme. But the evidence on youth unemployment is a bit like jelly – bright and brash on the surface, but 95 per cent water. You can’t use it to support anything. Only Polly Toynbee writing in the Guardian seems to have noticed that there was considerably more youth unemployment in the 80s than there is now.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying we should take all the public and private money that is spent on youth schemes away. The two groups that suffer the most when unemployment rises are the young trying to get a start on the employment ladder and older workers trying to stay on it – or get back on. Both groups require help – it’s not an either or thing.

The belief that all our problems will be solved if we throw everything into helping youth is irrational. It doesn’t even help youth long term. If older workers can’t get a job who will be paying to support them in their impoverished retirement? Today’s youth, one way or another.

In fact the interests of young and old are closer than you might think in other ways too. For example, schemes to help them often have the same flaws. So understanding what actually works when it comes to practically assisting one group can often lead to better initiatives to help the other.

Take the Future Jobs Fund. It is a Department for Work and Pensions initiative designed to create 170,000 additional jobs, mainly for 18-24 year olds who have been out of work for nearly a year. It does seem to be providing some new opportunities, particularly in work experience and training places. But it’s too early to say how many of real long-term jobs will remain when the money runs out in March 2011.

Here’s the problem. The Future Jobs Fund depends on there being employers ready to take government money to create sustainable jobs for youth. But will there be enough employers wanting to hire in the midst of a recession? Even with the incentive currently being offered of up to £6,500 for each unemployed young ­person taken on?

We really need to increase the number of expanding employers. One way to do that would be to put more effort into enterprise support for people creating new businesses. For example the over 50s – people who have seen recessions before. People with the experience, skills and knowledge to build businesses with a good survival rate, even in tough times.

So let’s put aside the false distinctions and the factional fighting. It’s often older people who can help younger people. And the other way round too.

Having said that, I’d not say no to a Future Enterprise Fund for the over 50s, should some wise government set one up. The point is the jobs the new enterprises create would help not just their older owners, but all of society.

This week has seen a rash of media stories saying that youth unemployment is running out of control, in reaction to the official labour market statistics released in August.

But the real story contained in the Office for National Statistics latest figures was rather different.

Though both groups have a hard time in a recession, oldsters who drop off the employment ladder are having a harder time even than the youngsters taking their first steps onto it.  It is this story – about the difficulty that older have finding work, that is rarely told.

Just how could they get it all so wrong? Well, read PRIME’s Occasional Paper on the subject.

Too many commentators appear to have rushed in and grabbed the first figure they could find, so anxious were they to “expose” a huge rise in youth unemployment. They all made the elementary error of assuming that those who were economically inactive were all unemployed and completely forgot that nearly one million people aged 18 – 24 are in full-time education.

The real story in these statistics is the same one that PRIME published in 2004 when PRIME wrote “Towards a 50+ enterprise culture” based on the 2003 labour market statistics.

It’s the over 50s stupid.

Why are the media writing wrong headlines and getting the interpretation of the data so wrong? The statistics do tell a fairly clear story that we have a huge worklessness issue among the over 50s. It’s not that hard to discover what is really going on.

When the data is adjusted for full-time education amongst the 16/17 year olds and the 18 – 24 year olds, it is quite apparent that these cohorts are faring betting than others. That is not to say that everything is rosy – one person in ten aged 18 – 24 economically inactive is not good news. But compare it with worklessness in the 50 to State Pension Age cohort. One in four is economically inactive in this age group according to these data.

How about a call for programmes for the 50+ workless? How about a call for more help for 50+ self-employment and enterprise?

Some voices are now calling for such action.  The TUC has just warned that long-term unemployed people aged over 50 are at risk of never working again – unless they get proper tailored support to get back into the job market.

The TUC quotes research that shows that people aged over 50 who are unemployed are 10 times more likely to still be out of work after two years than they are to have found a new job.

For a man in this age group, says the TUC, for every additional year spent unemployed the chances of never working again increase by almost 25 per cent. Almost half of unemployed people over 50 had been out of work for more than a year.

It’s not an optimistic story. But it is the truth. We won’t get far doing much about tackling unemployment if the majority of the media get the facts wrong. It takes the pressure off the authorities to get help to the people suffering the worst.

PRIME Occasional Paper August 2009 on Older Workers And Recession

PRIME OccPapAug09 Appendix 1 Labour Market Data Unadjusted

PRIME OccPapAug09 Appendix 2 Labour Market Data Adjusted By Education