Statistics on employer business demography include, analogously to statistics on business demography (in total), data on active enterprises, on births of enterprises, their survival, on deaths of enterprises and on the corresponding employment data.
The difference is that the separate data collection on employer enterprise demography only comprises employer enterprises. These are defined as enterprises that have at any time between 1.1. and 31.12. of a reference year at least 1 employee. The objective is to identify not only those enterprises which have already had at the time of creation at least 1 employee, but also those which became employers later on (“entries by growth”).
Accordingly, two types of becoming an employer can be distinguished. On the one hand, the birth of an enterprise that had at the time of its creation at least 1 employee. And on the other hand, “entry by growth”, i.e. an enterprise that was already active before without employees and reaches the threshold of 1 employee in the reference year. The condition is that the enterprise in two years, preceding the reference year, had no employees (to exclude a reactivation). Also, the growth should not be due to a takeover of an enterprise with employees.
It should be noted that the demography of the employer enterprises cannot be derived simply by omitting the size class "0 employees" under the "regular" harmonized data collection, as these data collections have different concepts: In the data collection on business demography (in total) those enterprises that at the time of the founding had no paid employment, and only later became employers, are not covered separately as an enterprise birth.
The restriction to enterprises with employees has two important reasons: On one hand the comparability of the European data especially with the data from the US but also from countries outside the European Union can be improved. On the other hand, the goal is also to concentrate more on the employment effects of enterprise births.
Since 2014, the data collection on employer business demography is mandatory also on European level. The legal basis is a commission implementing regulation amending Annex IX of the revised EU regulation on structural business statistics and on national level the business demography regulation. On national level, the expected European obligation was anticipated by the business demography regulation (revised version 2019). According to this legal basis, in 2020, data have to be compiled for reference year 2018. The data are shown by economic activities (NACE Rev.2) and legal form, by economic activities and employee size class, by economic activities and provinces as well as NUTS3, by turnover tax classes and for sole proprietorships by economic activities and gender.
In 2018,
The highest birth rates are found in the economic activities “Administrative and support service activities” (11.4%), “Other service activities” (11.2%), “Professional, scientific and technical activities” (11.1%) as well as “Wholesale and retail trade; repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles” (10.9%). In industry and construction (sections B-F, NACE Rev.2), the birth rate was lower (6.6%) than in the services sector (sections G-S, excluding 64.2 “Management activities of holding companies” and 64.3 “Trusts”) where it amounted to 8.4%.
The survival rate of newly created employer enterprises in 2013 that survived until 2014 amounted to 80.9%. One year later (2015) 66.9% of this cohort survived. The average survival rates for the employer enterprises that survived three and four years were 57.8% and 51.1%. Five years later (2018), only 45.7% of the employer enterprises founded in 2013 were still active. The highest five-year survival rates were recorded for the economic activities “Human health and social work activities” (67.7%), “Electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply” (59.0%) and “Manufacturing” (55.8%).
On average, in 2018, 3.4 jobs (for self-employed persons and employees) per employer
enterprise were created and 3.6 jobs were lost. In absolute counts, most jobs were created in the sectors
“Accommodation and food service activities”
The numbers of enterprise deaths for the last two reporting years (here: 2017 and 2018) and those for enterprise births, active enterprises and survival for the most recent reporting year (here: 2018) are provisional.
Since 2015 a revised method to produce employer business demography statistics was used. The data were recalculated with the new method back to reporting year 2007. For enterprise deaths the recalculation of the new methodology for the years 2007 to 2009 was ex post only possible in a limited way. That is why there is a break in time series for the year 2010.
Further information on the methodology of the data collection.
Results and information on Business Demography Statistics.