Harmonised Business Demography

In 2023, 98.6% of enterprise births and 98.3% of enterprise deaths had four or less employees.

Specifically, 76.1% of enterprise births and 71.2% of enterprise deaths had no employees.

Enterprises without employees showed the highest positive difference between enterprise births and deaths, reaching a net rate of 2.5%. Enterprises with one to four employees showed the highest negative difference, reaching a net rate of -0.2%.

Analysing the loss of members of different cohorts of enterprises in more detail, the following data table shows disappearances of enterprises in their first three years of life, taking as a reference the cohorts of enterprises born in 12 consecutive years.

Regarding the territory where enterprises had their head offices, Illes Balears (10.8%), the autonomous city of Melilla (10.4%) and Comunitat Valenciana (10.2%) showed the highest birth rates in 2023.

On the other hand, the lowest rates happened in Castilla y León, Comunidad Foral de Navarra and La Rioja (6.8% in all of them).

The highest death rates were recorded in the autonomous cities of Melilla (10.1%) and Ceuta (9.7%) and in Canarias (8.5%) while the lowest were recorded in Cantabria and Castilla y León (6.7% in both) and in La Rioja (6.8%).

There is no data revision, although data relative to enterprise deaths are provisional, since those deaths are considered definitive after two years from the reference period. It is necessary to exclude enterprises that reactivate in the two years following the year in which they die.

Data are estimated by taking enterprise deaths detected in 2023 and that have not been reactivated in 2024. On that base population, a random exclusion of a small percentage of units is performed, in accordance with the experience of previous years on reactivations in the second year. The results show irrelevant differences between final and provisional data.

Data presented here use the same adapted enterprise concept which was implemented for the reference year 2018. All results of this operation are available on INEBase.

Harmonised Business Demography provides aggregated information regarding the population of enterprises located in the national territory, considering aspects linked to business dynamism and applying a methodology as agreed within the scope of the European Union.

The delimitation of populations of interest is carried out by means of an ordered set of procedures varying in nature, designed in accordance with the harmonised methodology principles. Basically, the work is geared towards identifying the following aggregates:

• Stock of enterprises: Set of units that have been economically active during all or part of the reference year.
• Enterprise births: Set of units that, throughout the reference year, have created a combination of new production factors.
• Enterprise deaths: Set of units that, throughout the reference year, have dissolved all of their production factors.
• Surviving enterprises: Restricted to each cohort of births, this corresponds to the set of units that continue to be economically active in each of the five years following that of birth.

Business Demography analysis is not limited to just quantifying flows obtained during the processes of updating the Statistical Business Register (see CBR flows disseminated in the statistical operation Statistical Use of the CBR), since although the analysis of movements from administrative sources provides an initial preview of units’ renewal processes, the statistical work to be carried out for obtaining Business Demographic Indicators demands an additional effort, adding value to administrative information.

Indicators proposed in the methodology quantify the relative relevance of events of creation and destruction of enterprises within the Spanish entrepreneurial frame. The survival event is similar, but takes as reference the population of enterprise births detected in the initial observation period.

More information on the methodology and the standardised methodological report.

INE statistics are produced in accordance with the Code of Good Practice for European Statistics. More information on Quality at INE and Code of Best Practices.