Global Entrepreneurship Monitor United Kingdom Monitoring Report 2020

The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) research consortium measured rates of entrepreneurship across multiple phases in 43 economies in 2020, making it the world's most authoritative comparative study of entrepreneurial activity in the general adult population. In the UK in 2020, 9,453 adults aged 18 to 80 participated in the GEM survey. This report mainly focuses on the working-age adults sub-sample (18 to 64 year olds), comprising 7,587 participants. This monitoring report for the UK compares GEM measures of entrepreneurial attitudes, activity and aspirations in the UK, Germany and the United States. It also compares the results across the four home nations of the UK. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and the obvious disruptive impact on the lives of all of us and the huge impact on the economy it was decided that the GEM UK survey, in line with all GEM Global participating countries, should be pushed back until Q4 of 2020 rather than June through August. The UK team felt that this was preferable to not undertaking the survey at all as the pandemic raised many important questions about the ability of entrepreneurs, and indeed the wider population, to navigate their way through the crisis as the economy was effectively closed down and household incomes were under great stress for the majority of the population. The results from the GEM UK Adult Population Survey (APS) and National Expert Survey (NES) for 2020 provide a unique opportunity to lift the lid on a range of issues which lie at the heart of the entrepreneurial process in the midst of the crisis. As it turned out Q4 in the UK witnessed another second and third waves of the COVID-19 virus which led to two further lockdowns. The specific COVID-19 questions in the surveys need to be understood against that context.