Here’s a continuation of some interesting statistics from the Australian Government’s Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research recently released ‘Key statistics – Australian Small Business’:
– In the 2008-09 financial year, 1,982,066 small businesses (0-19 employees) were in operation. There were 205,726 new businesses started (93.5 per cent) who were in the micro business (0-4 employees) population. This was followed by the remainder of small businesses employing 5-19 employees, which accounted for 5.2 per cent of total business entries.
– The largest amounts of business exits (92.6 per cent) occurred in the micro business population, with the remainder of small businesses accounting for a smaller 5.4 per cent of all exits – almost cancelling out the number of start ups in the above point. In fact, the gap was 28,739 (net gain of businesses).
– Approximately 17,521 businesses exported goods in 2009-10 (up by 5.9 per cent from the previous year). Almost 50 per cent of small business exporters had their main operations in NSW (27.8 per cent) and around 35 per cent were from the wholesale trade sector.
– From that same year, small businesses exported goods to the value of $1.2 billion, representing 0.6 per cent of the total value of goods exported (up from 0.5 per cent in 2008-09)
– What about social media usage? Sensis 2010 revealed that 10 per cent of small businesses use social media. 33 per cent of SMEs have a page on social network sites and 27 per cent have a blog. Overall, 60 per cent of SMEs with a social network page rated its impact on their business as positive.
