An astonishing 835,494 new businesses were registered in the UK during the last year, according to Reboot SEO Agency.
That’s a 41 per cent increase from 2019 when 591,924 businesses were registered and a 96 per cent increase from 2018 when the figure sat at 425,703. It’s a 141 per cent increase from 2017 when 345,675 new businesses were registered.
The most popular new business between January 2020 and January 2021 is retail sale through mail order houses or via internet, with 39,733 registered.
Activities within this category could include internet auctions, internet retail sales, mail order, radio direct sales, telephone direct sales, and television direct sales.
This is followed by buying and selling property/real estate with 30,637 businesses registered. In third place is ‘management consultancy activities other than financial management’, with 29,911 new businesses registered. ‘Other service activities n.e.c.’ with 26,397 registrations followed and in fifth place ‘other letting and operating of own or leased estate’ with 26,264 businesses registered.
The city with the highest number of new businesses is London with 219,679. In second place is Birmingham with 19,724 businesses and Manchester in third with 17,517 businesses registered in the last year.
Gen Z are leading the way for new businesses
Figures from The Accountancy Partnership reveal that Generation Z are leading the way in starting their own businesses. In fact, they accounted for 18,000 start-ups registered in 2020.
In the year from February 2020, there’s been a 72 per cent increase in 16-20-year-olds registering as sole traders against the previous year. In fact, it was the only age group to experience an increase in sole traders. The pandemic was viewed as a key driver with a 32 per cent drop in job vacancies in 2020 compared to 2019 and one-fifth of hospitality jobs lost last year.
> See also: How to become a sole trader
That said, the trend of Gen Z becoming entrepreneurs has been evident in recent years. Since 2017, there has been a 206 per cent increase in 16-20-year-olds and a 72 per cent increase in 21-30-year-olds registering as sole traders.
The data also indicates that males tend to be more enterprising. Males make up 71 per cent of new sole traders in total, and this is the case for every age group. In 16-20-year-olds, women are 80 per cent less likely to start a new business than men.
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