Businesses In Scotland 2023

13th November 2024

As at March 2023, an estimated 340,760 private sector businesses were operating in Scotland.

Between March 2022 and March 2023, the estimated number of businesses decreased by 5.6%.

over the latest year, the number of unregistered businesses decreased by 18,350 (-9.9%) and the number of registered businesses decreased by 1,805 (-1.0%).

the decrease in the business stock over the latest year was driven by a fall in the number of small (0 to 49 employees) businesses - down by 20,235 between 2022 and 2023.

in contrast, there was an increase in the number of medium-sized and large-sized businesses between 2022 and 2023. There was also an increase in the number of abroad-owned businesses operating in Scotland.

as at March 2023, there were 338,385 Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) operating in Scotland. SMEs provided an estimated 1.2 million jobs, which was 55.9% of private sector employment. SMEs accounted for 99.3% of all private sector businesses and 42.4% of private sector turnover as at March 2023

For more information go to https://www.gov.scot/publications/businesses-in-scotland-2023/pages/introduction/

How many businesses are there in England?
At the start of 2023: there were 4.9 million private sector businesses in England, 219,000 in Wales, and 122,000 in Northern Ireland. London (1.0 million) and the South East of England (852,000) had the most private sector businesses, accounting for 34% of the UK business population.

The USA has approximately 33.2 million businesses in 2024. 99.9% (31.7 million) of all businesses are small businesses. There are 20,000 large corporations in the USA (>500 employees) There are 1 million startups in the USA.24 May 2024

Here are some numbers related to businesses in China:
Registered companies
As of 2022, there were around 52.8 million registered enterprises in China.

Individually owned businesses
As of 2023, there were 124 million individually owned businesses in China, which is 67.4% of all business entities in the country.

State-owned enterprises
In 2022, there were around 362,000 state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in China. SOEs are some of the largest Chinese companies and dominate sectors like finance, energy, and infrastructure.