Size Analysis of Businesses, 2010

Statistics on business structure include data for those businesses active in Wales for the period 2003 - 2010. The latest release updates the statistics previously released on 2 August 2007.

This release gives estimates of the size structure of all enterprises that are active in Wales, including estimates for the very smallest businesses that operate below the VAT threshold.  Enterprise counts are given by employee size band for different subsets of the business population, together with related employment and turnover aggregates.

The key points from the latest release are:

• In 2010, 40 per cent of private sector employment in Wales was accounted for by large enterprises (those with 250 or more employees), compared to 42 per cent for the UK as a whole.
• Between 2003 and 2010, the proportion of employment in the large size-band fell by 1.1 percentage points in both Wales and the UK.
• Between 2003 and 2010, around 0.5 per cent of enterprises active in Wales were non-UK owned, accounting for 13.7 per cent of employment in 2010, up from 12.5 per cent in 2003.
• There was considerable variation between industry sectors, with employment in agriculture almost entirely amongst micro businesses (91 per cent) and employment in production industries concentrated in the large size band (53 per cent).
• Within Wales, the local authority with the largest proportion of private sector employment in the large size-band was Newport (57 per cent), and the smallest was Powys (18 per cent).

Further information

StatsWales website.

Contact

Tel: 029 2082 5017
E-mail: economic.stats@wales.gsi.gov.uk

Next update

October 2011 (provisional - to be confirmed on the 'Due Out Soon' page)