The growth of migrant entrepreneurship: in 2022 entrepreneurs born abroad are a tenth of entrepreneurs in Italy

Observing the dynamics in progress in the last ten years, the Leone Moressa Foundation has analysed the data of Info Camere on the presence in Italy of entrepreneurs born abroad at 31 December 2022.

In 2022, there are 761,255 entrepreneurs born abroad, representing 10.1% of the total. Since 2010, the difference between born in Italy (-10.2%) and born abroad (+39.7%) is evident. Also in the last year the number of immigrants increased (+1.1%), while that of those born in Italy suffered a slight decrease (-0.8%).

The first two countries by number of entrepreneurs are China (77,541) and Romania (75,801), which together represent one fifth of immigrant entrepreneurs in Italy. In the last year the countries with the most significant increases were Albania (+7.4%), Egypt (+3.9%) and Pakistan (+3.5%). Bangladesh remains stable, in the last twelve years it has seen a doubling of its entrepreneurs (+136.8%).

Regarding the economic sectors, the sector with more entrepreneurs born abroad is commerce, with 235 thousand entrepreneurs (31.0% of the total).

The first region for the number of foreign entrepreneurs is Lombardy, with just over 160 thousand units, equal to about a fifth of the national total, confirming the trend of the strongest presence in the north. The higher incidence of entrepreneurs is recorded in Liguria (13.7%), Tuscany (13.4%) and Lazio (12.9%).