Business Signs of Life Series Two: Business Survival, 2020 to 2021

The ‘Business Signs of Life’ series has been created by the CSO to provide up to date information on how enterprises have survived during the COVID-19 pandemic. This release, ‘Business Signs of Life Series Two: Business Survival, 2020 to 2021’, tracks the 2019 business population through the pandemic and splits enterprises into three categories: ‘Appears Closed’, ‘At Risk of Closing’ and ‘Still in Business’. Enterprises in the ‘Appears Closed’ category are known to have ceased during 2020/2021 or are showing no signs of payroll or trading activity from administrative data sources. Enterprises in the ‘At Risk of Closing’ category have not officially ceased but have very limited signs of life. Enterprises in the ‘Still in Business’ category are showing evidence of continued trading at the end of 2021¹.

¹See Background Notes for details of categories.

A key aim of this release is to provide information in a timely fashion. To achieve this, the release uses available administrative data sources, which can provide more timely indicators than traditional statistical sources. Annual statistics on the business population are generally published with a time lag of 18 months, for example, the 2019 Business Demography results were published in July 2021. This reflects the definitions used internationally in business register and demography statistics. However, changes in business activity have taken place more abruptly in 2020/21 and timelier statistical measures are required.

Since the enterprise population is based on the reference year 2019, any new enterprises that have commenced trading over the period 1 January 2020 to 31 December 2021 are not captured in this release. It should be noted that, while this release focuses on enterprise closures and survival, there is always churn in the business population that includes both enterprise births and deaths. While enterprises closed or became at risk of closing during the COVID-19 pandemic, new businesses have also started trading. 

The population of enterprises in this publication refers to the 2019 Structural Business Statistics (SBS) population and excludes enterprises in Agriculture, Financial Services, Public Administration, Education, Human Health & Social Work, among others. The specific sectors included are NACE B-N (excluding K), R & S². Within this population, enterprises with less than 2 persons engaged have been excluded due to under coverage of these enterprises on the payroll and VAT data. As a result, 185,506 enterprises were excluded and all proportions in this release relate to a base population of 99,938 enterprises.

²See Background Notes for details of NACE categories.

Businesses that have healthy signs of both payroll activity and trading activity may, in fact, be at risk of closing due to their levels of debt. This aspect has not been considered in the current publication but may be included by using data from the Central Credit Register (CCR) in future iterations of this publication. See link: www.centralcreditregister.ie

Key Findings

• More than 8 in 10 enterprises (84%) trading normally in 2019 had survived by the end of 2021
• Businesses still trading at the end of 2021 accounted for 94% of jobs in 2019
• Almost 6% of enterprises in 2019, where 2.2% of persons were engaged, appeared closed at the end of 2021
• Just over 10% of enterprises, with 3.5% of the total of persons engaged, were at risk of closing at the end of 2021
• The Real estate activities sector (10.3%) and the Accommodation and food service activities sector (9.4%) had the highest proportion of enterprises that appeared closed
• The Other services activities sector, which includes gyms and hairdressers, had the highest proportion of enterprises that were at risk of closure at 18.4%
• The Other services activities sector (11.2%) and the Arts, entertainment and recreation sector (9.2%) each had the highest proportion of persons engaged in enterprises in 2019 that were at risk of closure at the end of 2021
• In all but two sectors, over 90% of persons engaged in 2019 were associated with enterprises that survived
• Almost 7% of micro (2-9 persons engaged) and only 0.5% of large (250+ persons engaged) enterprises appeared closed at the end of 2021
• Less than 2% of large and 12.4% of micro enterprises were at risk of closing at the end of 2021