Almost half of entrepreneurs or business owners in Brazil are middle class or Class C, according to a Locomotiva Institute study, in partnership with Sebrae, the Brazilian Micro and Small Business Support Service, as reported by Agência Brasil.
The study reveals that entrepreneurship is no longer an alternative source of temporary or emergency income, it has now “consolidated as a work aspiration, based on the desire for social ascension and, at the same time, the loss of status associated with traditional employment.”
The main factors in choosing this activity are flexibility, autonomy, and the expectation of higher earnings. According to the study, starting their own business can offer better living conditions and avoid long working hours, exhausting commutes, and sometimes toxic or abusive work environments.
Décio Lima, president of Sebrae, stated that “the dream of owning one’s own business motivates millions of men and women who strive to support themselves and their families. And not only that, but they generate employment and income and create social inclusion, mobilizing entire communities across the country”.
Lima associates the sector’s growth to “incentives and the necessary legal environment to expand the productivity and competitiveness of these companies with public policies that guarantee access to credit, innovation, and training.”
Euzébio de Sousa, an economist and researcher from the São Paulo School of Sociology and Politics Foundation (FESPSP), reinforced that entrepreneurship is fundamental to the country’s development and advocated for business qualification.
“Not every business registration, not every self-employed job, not every service provision can be automatically considered an expression of entrepreneurial initiative. It is necessary to distinguish entrepreneurship proper, associated with innovation and the expansion of productive capacity, from forms of subordinate work disguised as autonomy, often organized through the use of independent contractors, and also from activities of mere subsistence that are usually called necessity-driven entrepreneurship,” said the economist.
According to Euzébio Sousa, necessity-driven entrepreneurship usually occurs when a person starts a business because they have not found a satisfactory option in the job market, “a common situation in contexts of unemployment, high informality, low wages, precarious work, and lack of social protection.”
To this researcher, entrepreneurship “cannot stem from poverty or the absence of alternatives.” because “when this occurs, we are not dealing with innovative entrepreneurship capable of promoting development, but with defensive survival strategies in a context of strong social and occupational precariousness”.
