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The same thing is happening all over Western Europe too. There are increasingly fewer young people and a lot of them are first or second generation immigrants,

• SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
  That's interesting that that's a quality of immigrants. I feel like that's actually just everyone who doesn't own a business.
  • andix 4y ago
    A lot of the immigrants don’t speak the language at all (and no other European language), or not very well, which is kind of a show stopper.
    • prmoustache 4y ago
      In full immersion it only takes a few months to know enough of a language to be autonomous in a country. The hardest part is to find trustable lawyers that can translate for you the most complicated bits.
  • Taniwha 4y ago
    You have to remember that immigrants tend to be self-selected - they're the people with the get up and go to leave their lives and travel to another country and make another new life - of course there are more entrepreneurs in immigrant communities
    • dragonwriter 4y ago
      > You have to remember that immigrants tend to be self-selected - they're the people with the get up and go to leave their lives and travel to another country and make another new life - of course there are more entrepreneurs in immigrant communities On top of self-selection, they are also selected by the immigration system, which is... not a neutral force.
    • andix 4y ago
      In Europe we are currently mostly selecting refugees. Most of the migration of qualified people is taking place inside the European Union, where people can move and work freely. Well educated people from other countries usually pick the US or Canada, as they are actively looking for qualified people.
      • actionfromafar 4y ago
        I thought OP meant refugees when I read it. You typically don't become a refugee ending up in Europe by sitting still in your city of origin, then suddenly being airlifted into Germany. It's hard work ending up in Europe. You have to be driven, one way or another, to endure that journey.
        • snordgren 4y ago
          It's hard work, but if you come at 18 you're missing 11-12 years of employer-relevant schooling compared to your local peers, and your parents aren't there to encourage you to value education. Refugees are at a disadvantage in terms of employability, capital, and in academic capital, while the European labor market has high unemployment, few low-skilled jobs, and high educational demands on most jobs. They may be driven, but the deck is stacked against them, which is why we aren't seeing more impressive outcomes for these groups.
          • DoughnutHole 4y ago
            Education, language, and refugee-specific labour restrictions are the biggest issue. By education I don't even mean they're undereducated - for example over 40% of Syrian refugees here in Ireland are college educated, comparable to the overall level nationally. But their educational institutions are unknown here, and not necessarily trusted - and a limited grasp of the language is always going to hold you back. We have a significant shortage of medical staff here but Ukrainian doctors have so far been unable to enter the workforce because it takes about a year to go through exams to verify their qualifications. Plus asylum seekers in many countries are banned from working at all - hard to have a good economic outcome when you're not allowed to earn an income, sometimes for years.
    • SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
      That wasn't the original claim: > There are increasingly fewer young people and a lot of them are first or second generation immigrants, that are lacking the needed skills/knowledge to run a business. That reads to me that immigrants are less likely and don't have the skills to be entrepreneurs.
• bsder 4y ago
  From article: > But their own children have now mostly moved to cities in search of higher-paying, less onerous work. Perhaps they have plenty of skills, look at the rewards, and "Nope" right out. Running a small business is ferociously hard, and you are almost always better off taking a nice, cushy, well-paying salary somewhere if you have the option--in spite of the general HN zeitgeist, advice, and bias towards startups.
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  • andix 4y ago
    But with most of those cushy desk jobs it’s really hard to make a living nowadays. 95% will probably never be able to buy a house, and also owning a car got too expensive for many of them (although that may be a thing). As a small business owner you can easily make two or three times what a white collar worker with a masters degree makes. And they usually keep some cash on the side, so they don’t have to pay 50% taxes, like employees do.
    • SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
      I would be interested in actual statistics on this.
    • numeri 4y ago
      So, tax fraud?
      • andix 4y ago
        Yes, from my experience that’s very common. Most small businesses do that to some extent. Do you have different experiences?
    • lmm 4y ago
      Thankfully not so much in Japan, which (unlike most developed nations) hasn't made it illegal to build houses in places people want to live yet.
• ccity88 4y ago
  In my experience, it's the exact opposite. It's the first and second generation immigrants who tend to have more kids and who tend to bring in fresh labour pools, and therefore more business making and running opportunities. This is a longstanding problem for any country that has an aging population, but the going solution (at least in Europe) has been to import labour by turning the needle on immigration. Japan hasn't done this, and they're notoriously anti-immigration. Think about the businesses that get created - local cultural food shops, cultural clothing shops, even in some cases entire submarkets to service immigrant communities. As time goes on, like or not, but countries that failed to adapt to the global era will fall behind to those willing to take a chance on immigration.
  • midoridensha 4y ago
    >Japan hasn't done this, and they're notoriously anti-immigration. No, they're not. Immigration laws were reformed completely in the last decade, and it's extremely easy to immigrate here if you have valuable skills. Lots of service jobs are also being filled by immigrants from SE Asia now.
• tluyben2 4y ago
  Not sure if that’s because of the same reason. Most people I see here who are in a position to take on something like taking over a running business also usually already have some kind of career or business and are not interested in more risk, responsibility or harder work. They rather take an easier life with family and friends.
• zemvpferreira 4y ago
  Western European here (Lisbon, Portugal). One outstanding point to me from the article is that even very successful businesses are having trouble finding successors. I know very few successful businesses here. Believe you me, those are not lacking suitors, inheritors, successors or what have you in Portugal. There's a sad story of economic opportunity between the lines.
• deleted 4y ago
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