Key Small Business Statistics - July 2012

Thousands of businesses enter and exit the marketplace throughout the year. Keeping track of these births and deaths is no easy matter. Statistics Canada made available data on SMEs in Canada through the Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises Data Warehouse (SMEs Data Warehouse).

Figure 2 shows the number of small businesses (those with fewer than 100 employees) that entered and exited the marketplace annually between 2002 and 2008. Over this period, 99,000 new small businesses, on average, were created in Canada each year. There was no clear pattern of business entries over the period. In 2002, there were approximately 90,000 entries, gradually increasing to a peak of over 115,000 in 2005. This figure fell to 97,000 in 2006 before recovering to 110,000 in 2007. The number of entries dropped significantly in 2008 to about 65,000. The number of exits remained at approximately 86,000 from 2002 to 2004. In 2007 and 2008, the number of exits totalled 180,000, reaching 95,000 in 2008. On a net basis, the average number of entries over the 2002–2008 period was 8,800. In 2006, there were more exits than entries, although not by a significant amount. In 2008, however, there were 30,000 more exits than entries.

Figure 2: Entries and Exits of Small Businesses with up to 100 Employees, 2002 to 2008

[Description of Figure 2]
Source: Statistics Canada, Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises Data Warehouse, 2011.