Size Analysis of Businesses, 2011

Statistics on business structure include data for those businesses active in Wales for the period 2003 - 2011. The latest release updates the statistics previously released on 27 October 2010.

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 2011, 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 2011, the proportion of employment in the large size-band fell by 1.7 percentage points in Wales and fell by 1.6 percentage points in the UK.
• Between 2003 and 2011, around 0.5 per cent of enterprises active in Wales were non-UK owned, accounting for 14.1 per cent of employment in 2011, up from 12.5 per cent in 2003.
• There was considerable variation between industry sectors, with employment in agriculture almost entirely amongst micro businesses (93 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 Cardiff (55 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 2012 (provisional - to be confirmed on the 'Due Out Soon' page)