Business Statistics Canada

[Cecila Dammrich]

TheRepresentation of women on boards of directors: Visualization tool provides access to data that highlight women in leadership and strategic decision-making roles within corporations conducting business in Canada. It allows the user to compare and analyze data based on industry, size (assets), province, country of control and type of corporation.

The Quarterly Survey of Financial Statistics: Visualization Tool includes information collected as part of the Quarterly Financial Statistics for Enterprises program, which provides data used to measure the financial position and performance of incorporated businesses by industry aggregations.

The interactive tool presents information on activities of multinational enterprises at the international and national level. At the international level, users can see the importance of foreign multinationals on the Canadian economy as well as the similar role of Canadian multinationals in foreign economies, by country.

Quarterly statistics on issues and holdings of securities. Data presented by numerous dimensions including sector, currency, original maturity, type of interest rate and market of issuance. Definitions, concepts and presentations used are consistent with the recommendations of the Handbook on Securities Statistics, an internationally agreed framework for classifying these instruments.

Key Small Business Statistics provides statistical data on the business sector in Canada, focusing on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The data are, at the time of publication, the most up-to-date statistics available to Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada.

Since self-employed and "indeterminate" businesses are not considered to have paid employeesEndnote 1 , and self-employed often do not have paid employees, these two groups are generally not included in this publication.

Between 2005 and 2019, the business birth rate was lower for majority male-owned businesses than for the majority female-owned businesses. However, the survival rates were slightly higher for majority male-owned in comparison to majority female-owned businesses.

Between 2020 and 2021, small businesses were responsible for 69.0% of the net employment changeEndnote 3 in the private sector, which increased by approximately 494,300 jobs. Medium-sized businesses contributed 17.4% of this net employment change and large businesses contributed 13.7%

More than 99% of businesses in the following three industries are small businesses: agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting; real estate and rental and leasing; and other services (except public administration).

This variation between birth rates for these two sectors can be explained in part by the entry cost and different levels of competition. If this is, indeed, the case, higher birth rates would be observed in sectors with a lower entry cost or with a higher level of competition than other sectors.

Majority male-owned businesses showed higher survival rates than majority female-owned businesses over the course of the fourteen years after their creation.Endnote 6 However, businesses owned equally by males and females had the highest survival rates over the period observed.Endnote 7 After five years (T + 5), 77.1% of majority female-owned businesses were still operating, compared with 79.6% of majority male-owned businesses, and 84.7% of equally owned businesses.

SMEs play an essential role in employing Canadians across the country. At the provincial level, the percentage of private sector employment in SMEs is highest in Prince Edward Island and in Saskatchewan, at 96.2% and 94.0%, respectively (Table 5). In contrast, this percentage is lowest in Ontario (85.9%) and Quebec (86.5%). Total private sector employment in Ontario and Quebec amounts to 7,556,100 jobs, which represents 62.4% of Canadian private sector employment.

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic posed significant challenges to the Canadian economy. The resulting economic contraction significantly impacted 2020 employment statistics. However, in 2021, the economy started recovering with a positive net employment change in the private sector of 716,800, which corresponds to an annual growth rate of 6.3% (Table 7). The net employment change among small businesses was 494,300, compared with 124,500 among medium-sized businesses, or an annual growth rate of 6.4% and 5.3%, respectively. Consequently, the contribution to net employment change was 69.0% from small businesses and 17.4% from medium-sized businesses. SMEs were responsible for 86.4% of net employment change over the last year (Figure 9).

The most significant net employment changes observed in the services-producing sector were the increases in wholesale and retail trade (145,500) and in professional, scientific and technical services (135,800). These two industries alone accounted for 47.0% of the net change in the services-producing sector. The contribution to net employment change by SMEs in these two industries was 85.6% for wholesale and retail trade and 74.2% for professional, scientific and technical services.

Firms that achieve high growth in a short period of time tend to make a large contribution in terms of employment and wealth creation. Based upon a 2017 study,Endnote 13 high-growth firmsEndnote 14 contributed to 41% of the total net employment change between 2009 and 2012. High-growth firms, as discussed below, are found across all industrial sectors.

Exports are vital to Canada's economy. They drive economic growth and are strongly correlated with real gross domestic product growth. Furthermore, exports can provide a strategically important means of growing a business by expanding its market beyond the confines of Canada's relatively small domestic market.

Exporters are found in all provinces. In 2021, out of the 52,663 establishments that exported goods, 42.1% were operating in Ontario (Table 9). Ontario had the highest concentration of exporters at 49.4 per thousand establishments. The lowest concentration of exporters was found in the Territories and in Newfoundland and Labrador, with 16.8 and 18.6 exporters per thousand establishments, respectively.

The contribution of SMEs to the export of goods varied by industrial sector (Figure 13). In 2021, the contribution of SMEs to the total value of goods exported was 73.3% in wholesale trade and 63.1% in "other industries." At the other end of the scale, the contribution of SMEs to the value of goods exported was only 6.7% in management of companies and enterprises, and 41.9% in manufacturing.

The COVID-19 pandemic has posed significant challenges to exports for Canadian businesses. As the economy started to recover between 2020 and 2021, the value of goods exported increased. Exports to the United States, the top destination for Canadian goods exports, increased by 25.9% (Table 10).

Among the 10 main destinations for exports of Canadian goods in 2021, the highest contribution attributable to SMEs to the total value of goods exported came from exports to the United Kingdom, the third leading destination, with 68.7% of the total value of goods exported by SMEs.

In 2021, the second-leading destination for goods produced by small businesses was China, followed by Japan. The United Kingdom and China were the second- and third-leading destinations for medium-sized businesses, respectively.

Self-employed workers include those with incorporated and unincorporated businesses. According to the Labour Force Survey, in 2021, roughly 28% of self-employed used paid help. "Indeterminate" businesses include self-employed and contract workers.

Statistics Canada produces several sources of data (such as the Entrepreneurship Indicators Database and the Longitudinal Employment Analysis Program) that present similar data on business births and deaths. The differences in levels between these sources and the data produced by the Economic Analysis Division (EAD) of Statistics Canada in the National Accounts Longitudinal Microdata File (NALMF) are a result of the different data sources and methodological concepts used. For instance, Statistics Canada also developed a newly experimental series on monthly business openings and closures based on the Longitudinal Employment Analysis Program. The data produced by the EAD through the NALMF were chosen because, in addition to providing the number of business births and deaths, the survival rate of start-up businesses is also available.

When updating the annual data on business births and deaths, the most recent year available is added and the previous statistics are revised accordingly. For this reason, the statistics in Key Small Business Statistics differ slightly from one issue to the next.

We observed that the survival rates by gender were higher than the survival curves shown in section 1.3. This is partly due to the omission of the group of businesses for which we do not have information on gender ownership.

We observed that the Figure 7 trend differs from that of Figure 2. This difference may be again due to the omission of the group of businesses for which we do not have information on gender ownership.

Individuals who work for a local, provincial, or federal government, a government service or agency, a Crown corporation, or a government-funded establishment, such as a school (including universities) or a hospital.

According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, high-growth firms are firms with 10 or more employees that have experienced average annual growth greater than 20%, in terms of employment or revenue, over three consecutive years.

Statistics Canada made significant changes to the methodology used to generate the estimates of GDP by business size. For this reason, caution should be applied in comparing the GDP statistics in this issue of the Key Small Business Statistics with those in previous issues.

The Business Register (BR) is Statistics Canada's continuously-maintained central repository of baseline information on businesses and institutions operating in Canada. As a statistical register, it provides listings of units and related attributes required for survey sampling frames, data integration, stratification and business demographic statistics.

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