In 2020, the rate of business births in the EU decreased by 1.1 compared to the previous year percentage points (pp) at 8.9%. Preliminary rates of business deaths (2020: 7.6%) remained approximately the same level as the previous year, showing some resilience of businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic.
This information comes from data published today by Eurostat. The article presents a handful of results from more detailed investigations. Statistics Explained article on structural business statistics.
In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic significantly disrupted the business environment, including the temporary closure of certain business sectors, making many people reluctant to start new businesses when existing businesses were struggling. struggling to stay afloat. In response, governments put in place temporary support schemes to offset the impact of the crisis, which may also explain the resilience of the business mortality rate in 2020.
In 2020, business creation rates among EU Member States ranged from 4.6% in Greece, 5.4% in Austria, 6.5% in Italy, 6.7% in Ireland, 6.8% in Sweden and 6.9% in Belgium to 11.3 % for France and Latvia, 12.1% in Estonia, 12.2% in Portugal, 14.1% in Malta and 18.1% in Lithuania.
Source dataset: bd_9bd_sz_cl_r2
The average employment size of newly established companies in 2020 ranged from 0.6 people in the Netherlands to 2.1 people in Greece. In the EU, the average size of new businesses was 1.2 people, compared to 1.3 in 2019.
When it comes to preliminary business mortality rates, Ireland recorded the lowest value at 1.6%, followed by Belgium (3.2%), France (3.9%), Austria (4.1%) and Malta (4.5%). The highest business death rates were recorded in Lithuania at 20.8%, followed by Bulgaria (14.6%), Portugal (13.0%), Denmark (12.2%) and Latvia (11.7%).
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Methodological notes:
- Business demographics are statistics on, among other things, the creation, survival (tracked up to five years after birth) and disappearance of businesses within the business population. It reflects the evolution of the stock of businesses within the business economy from one year to the next, reflecting, among other things, the level of competition, entrepreneurship and the business environment.
- Business death rate in the EU in 2020 (7.6%): the slight decrease in the business death rate of 0.5 percentage points compared to 2019 should be interpreted with caution and could be within the margin error of the preliminary estimate.
- The birth of a business amounts to the creation of a combination of production factors, with the restriction that no other business is involved in the event. Creations do not include entries into the business population due to mergers, splits, demergers or restructuring of a group of businesses, nor entries into a subpopulation that result solely from a change in activity. The birth rate is the number of creations compared to the stock of active businesses.
- The death of a firm is equivalent to the dissolution of a combination of factors of production, with the restriction that no other firms are involved in the event. A business is only counted in the death count if it is not reactivated within two years. Likewise, a reactivation within two years is not counted as a birth.
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