Foreword

Inclusive entrepreneurship policies seek to unlock entrepreneurial talent across the population, helping to ensure that everyone has an equal opportunity of creating a successful and sustainable business, regardless of their gender, age, place of birth, work status or other personal characteristics. In turn, opening up entrepreneurship to more people can contribute to achieving more inclusive and sustainable growth. Because it is inherently people-centred, inclusive entrepreneurship policies can also create stronger labour market attachment and tackle social and financial exclusion.

The 2023 edition of the Missing Entrepreneurs seeks to help governments in designing more effective inclusive entrepreneurship policies and schemes. It presents updated indicators on entrepreneurship activities by women, immigrants, youth, seniors, and the unemployed, and includes a new chapter covering people with disabilities. The report presents the main trends over the medium-term across European Union (EU) Member States and OECD countries. It also provides an updated overview of policy actions to address obstacles to entrepreneurship, including concrete examples and innovative approaches that can inspire others.

This edition of the Missing Entrepreneurs contains two thematic policy chapters that examine and assess the effectiveness of youth entrepreneurship support schemes and welfare bridge schemes to support job seekers in business creation across EU Member States and OECD countries. Lessons from experiences to date are identified and recommendations are offered to governments and other stakeholders.

The report is produced as part of a wider collaboration between the OECD and European Commission. Other activities in this collaboration include a biennial set of country-level assessment notes on inclusive entrepreneurship policy in EU Member States, a set of policy briefs on selected issues and the new OECD-EU Youth Entrepreneurship Policy Academy, which was launched in March 2023. This new policy learning network brings together 150 policy makers, youth entrepreneurship networks, social entrepreneurship networks, researchers and programme managers from across the EU and beyond. The aim of this new network is to exchange on policy lessons and innovations. Each of these stand-alone activities also informed this report.

This report was developed by the Centre for Entrepreneurship, SMEs, Regions and Cities (CFE) in collaboration with DG Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion. It is part of the Programmes of Work and Budget of the OECD Committee for SMEs and Entrepreneurship (CSMEE) and the Local Employment and Economic Development (LEED) Programme. Initial draft content (CFE/LEED/SME(2023)1) was discussed the 4^th session of the CSMEE on 29-30 March 2023 and the 82^nd session of the LEED Directing Committee on 10-11 May 2023. The final report was approved by written procedure on 6 November 2023 (CFE/LEED/SME(2023)4).