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Business In Ireland 2015

Enterprise Births, Survivals and Deaths

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CSO Business Demography data monitors the number of enterprise births (new enterprises created) and deaths (enterprises that ceased trading) in the business economy. Births and deaths due to mergers, takeovers, break-ups, change of activity or the restructuring of a set of enterprises are all excluded from the data.

This chapter presents this information at a broad sectoral level as well as for the total business economy. It is also possible to track new enterprise births in order to gain a better understanding of the types of business that are more likely to survive the early years of their life cycle¹.

1 See Appendix 2 for full definitions of enterprise births and deaths.

	Deaths	Births
2010	17022	13955
2011	15177	14343
2012	16199	15079
2013	18287	13825
2014	15316	16256
2015		18102

The total number of enterprises that ceased trading during 2014 was 15,316, a decrease of over 16% from 2013 levels
Enterprise deaths decreased by 10% in the period 2010 to 2014
In 2015, births showed an annual increase of over 11% to 18,102
Between 2010 and 2015 the number of new births increased by almost 30%
The lowest number of enterprise births between 2010 and 2015 was 13,825 enterprises in 2013

	Deaths	Births
2010	23690	16961
2011	20750	16794
2012	20467	18605
2013	22857	16505
2014	22001	19382
2015		23073

The total number of persons engaged in enterprise that ceased trading during 2014 was 22,001, a drop of over 7% on 2010 figures
Employment in enterprise deaths between 2013 and 2014 decreased by almost 4%
Persons engaged in enterprise births increased from 16,961 in 2010 to 23,073 in 2015, which is the highest recorded number of persons engaged in enterprise births since the Business Demography series first began
Persons employed in enterprise births showed an annual increase of just over 19% in 2015

	Industry	Construction	Distribution	Services	Financial and Insurance
2010	778	2467	2552	7710	448
2011	895	2589	2683	7791	385
2012	925	2757	2704	8174	519
2013	968	2473	2304	7441	639
2014	1110	3526	2468	8734	418
2015	1186	4226	2573	9573	544

All sectors showed an annual increase in the number of new enterprise births in 2015
The largest annual increase in enterprise births was in the Services sector, which showed an increase of 839 new births on the previous year from 8,734 to 9,573 in 2015
The second largest increase in 2015 was in the Construction sector which had 700 new enterprises
The Financial and Insurance sector experienced the highest percentage increase in new births between 2014 and 2015 at 30.1%

	Industry	Construction	Distribution	Services	Financial and Insurance
2010	711	2432	3206	10308	304
2011	995	2679	3352	9474	294
2012	2070	2817	2902	10105	711
2013	910	2497	3338	9250	510
2014	1276	3663	2850	11156	437
2015	1704	4376	3333	13210	450

The Services sector had 13,210 persons engaged in enterprise births in 2015, the largest number of births in any business sector
This was followed by the Construction sector with 4,376 persons engaged
The Financial and Insurance sector accounted for just 450 persons engaged in new enterprise births in 2015

	Industry	Construction	Distribution	Services	Financial and Insurance
2010	963	4697	2857	8066	439
2011	874	3786	2771	7363	383
2012	957	3584	2952	8144	562
2013	1061	3803	3217	9319	887
2014	909	3202	2598	8130	477

The number of enterprise deaths annually decreased across all sectors in 2014
The Services sector had the highest number of deaths with 8,130 enterprises ceasing activity in 2014
The Construction sector also accounted for a large proportion of total deaths at 3,202 enterprises
The largest annual percentage decrease for enterprise deaths in 2014 was in the Financial and Insurance sector which decreased from 887 enterprise deaths in 2013 to 477 enterprise deaths in 2014, a drop of 46.2%

	Industry	Construction	Distribution	Services	Financial and Insurance
2010	1282	5372	4708	11078	1250
2011	1278	4080	4537	10504	351
2012	1400	3508	4555	10673	331
2013	1227	3544	4548	13111	427
2014	1957	3227	3896	12429	492

The Services sector accounted for the largest number of persons engaged in enterprise deaths in 2014 with a value of 12,429 employees
The smallest number of persons engaged in enterprises that ceased trading during 2014 was 492 persons in the Financial and Insurance sector
The Industry sector showed the largest annual percentage increase of persons engaged in enterprise deaths in 2014 at 59.5%, when the number of employees who worked for enterprises that ceased during the year increased from 1,227 persons in 2013 to 1,957 persons in 2014
The number of positions lost because of enterprise deaths in the Distribution sector fell from 4,548 persons engaged in 2013 to 3,896 persons in 2014, a drop of 14.3%

	2010 births	2011 births	2012 births	2013 births	2014 births
Year of birth	13954	14344	15080	13824	16257
Survived 1 year	12181	12970	13256	11708	13952
Survived 2 years	11678	11943	11692	10938
Survived 3 years	10775	10720	10931
Survived 4 years	9742	10157
Survived 5 years	9331

All enterprise births were monitored for the years 2010 to 2014 to assess their survival rate and the resulting effect on employment
The one year survival rate which relates to enterprises born in one year and still active in the next year, decreased slightly from 2010 to 2014 from 87.3% to 85.3%
There were 13,954 new enterprise birthed in 2010, with 9,331 of these still active in reference year 2015, a 66.9% survival rate

	2010 births	2011 births	2012 births	2013 births	2014 births
Year of birth	16961	16794	18606	16505	19383
Survived 1 year	14681	15005	15683	14428	16837
Survived 2 years	13792	13715	14800	14102
Survived 3 years	12806	12492	14082
Survived 4 years	11860	11870
Survived 5 years	11767

There were 16,961 persons engaged in enterprise births in 2010, of which 69.4% or 11,767 persons were still engaged in 2015
The one year survival rate for persons engaged in enterprise births from 2011 to 2015 increased slightly from 86.6% to 86.9%
The two year survival rate for persons engaged increased from 81.3% in 2012 to 85.4% in 2015
The largest number of persons engaged by year of birth was in 2014 with 19,383

2.1 Number of enterprise births and associated persons engaged by sector, 2010 to 2015

2.2 Number of enterprise deaths and associated persons engaged by sector, 2010 to 2014

2.3 Number of enterprise survivals and associated persons engaged by sector, 2010 to 2014

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Table 2.1 Number of enterprise births and associated persons engaged by sector, 2010 to 2015
	Births							Persons engaged
	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015	Total	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015	Total
Industry	778	895	925	968	1,110	1,186	5,862	711	995	2,070	910	1,276	1,704	7,666
Construction	2,467	2,589	2,757	2,473	3,526	4,226	18,038	2,432	2,679	2,817	2,497	3,663	4,376	18,464
Distribution	2,552	2,683	2,704	2,304	2,468	2,573	15,284	3,206	3,352	2,902	3,338	2,850	3,333	18,981
Services	7,710	7,791	8,174	7,441	8,734	9,573	49,423	10,308	9,474	10,105	9,250	11,156	13,210	63,503
Financial & Insurance	448	385	519	639	418	544	2,953	304	294	711	510	437	450	2,706
Total Business Economy	13,955	14,343	15,079	13,825	16,256	18,102	91,560	16,961	16,794	18,605	16,505	19,382	23,073	111,320
Source: CSO Business Demography

Table 2.2 Number of enterprise deaths and associated persons engaged by sector, 2010 to 2014
	Enterprise deaths						Persons engaged in enterprise deaths
	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014	Total	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014	Total
Industry	963	874	957	1,061	909	4,764	1,282	1,278	1,400	1,227	1,957	7,144
Construction	4,697	3,786	3,584	3,803	3,202	19,072	5,372	4,080	3,508	3,544	3,227	19,731
Distribution	2,857	2,771	2,952	3,217	2,598	14,395	4,708	4,537	4,555	4,548	3,896	22,244
Services	8,066	7,363	8,144	9,319	8,130	41,022	11,078	10,504	10,673	13,111	12,429	57,795
Financial & Insurance	439	383	562	887	477	2,748	1,250	351	331	427	492	2,851
Total Business Economy	17,022	15,177	16,199	18,287	15,316	82,001	23,690	20,750	20,467	22,857	22,001	109,765
Source: CSO Business Demography

Table 2.3 Number of enterprise survivals and associated persons engaged, 2010 to 2014
	Enterprise survivals							Persons engaged in enterprise survivals
		Survived							Survived
Year	Enterprise Births	1 years	2 years	3 years	4 years	5 years	Year	Enterprise Births	1 years	2 years	3 years	4 years	5 years
2010	13,954	12,181	11,678	10,775	9,742	9,331	2010	16,961	14,681	13,792	12,806	11,860	11,767
2011	14,344	12,970	11,943	10,720	10,157		2011	16,794	15,005	13,715	12,492	11,870
2012	15,080	13,256	11,692	10,931			2012	18,606	15,683	14,800	14,082
2013	13,824	11,708	10,938				2013	16,505	14,428	14,102
2014	16,257	13,952					2014	19,383	16,837
Source: CSO Business Demography

Business In Ireland 2015

Enterprise Births, Survivals and Deaths

Enterprise Births, Survivals and Deaths

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