Employer enterprise demography

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.

On European level there is currently no obligation to deliver data on employer enterprise demography. However, a corresponding regulation is being prepared. On national level, the expected European obligation was anticipated by the business demography regulation (adopted in 2009).

In Austria, the data base for the statistics on employer business demography is produced at the same time and using the same approach as the data base for the business demography in total. For the creation of the employer business demography data base, the most recent currently available administrative data are used. Furthermore, estimation procedures complete the calculations. For consistency reasons, the calculations are made for the entire time series and not just for the current reporting year. That means that slightly different data for the years which have been compiled earlier are produced. As the quality of the administrative data forming the basis for the calculation of business demography statistics has increased, Statistics Austria publishes new results for the entire time series (since 2004).

Further information on the methodology of the data collection.

Overview of the results for 2009

In 2009, 20 017 new employer enterprises were created with 69 585 persons employed (52 026 of them employees). The employer enterprise birth rate was 8.4%. Compared with the year 2008 the rate increased by 0.6 percentage points. The highest birth rates are found in the economic activities "Arts, Entertainment and recreation" (13.6%), "Education” (12.9%) and “Other service activities” (12.6%). In industry and construction (sections B-F, NACE Rev.2), the birth rate was lower (6.2%) than in the services sector (sections G-S, excluding 64.2 "Management activities of holding companies": 10.0%).

The survival rate of newly created employer enterprises in 2004 that survived until 2005 amounted to 86.0%. One year later (2006) 74.4% of this cohort survived. The average survival rates for the employer enterprises that survived three and four years were 65.9% and 58.9%. Five years later (2009), slightly more than half of the employer enterprises founded in 2004 were still active (52.1%). The highest five-year survival rates were recorded for the economic activities “Human health and social work activities” (almost 70%), “Electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply” (67.9%) and “Mining and quarrying” (66.7%).

22 975 employer enterprises with 73 407 employees were closed in 2009. On average, the death rate was 9.6%; it increased compared to the previous year (2008) by 0.6 percentage points. Death rates above this average can be found in the activities "Arts, Entertainment and recreation" (14.7%), “Real estate activities” (12.8%) and “Information and communication” (12.7%). In industry and construction (sections B-F), the death rate was 6.1% and in the services sector (sections G-S, without 64.2) 10.8%.

There was an average of 3.5 jobs (for self-employed persons and employees) which were created, whereas 3.2 jobs were lost per employer enterprise. In absolute counts, most jobs were created in the sectors “Accommodation and food service activities” (14 140), “Wholesale and retail trade; repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles” (11 735) and “Professional, scientific and technical activities” (8 878).

Results and information on Business Demography Statistics.