In the EU, three quarters (75.6 %) of all active in the business economy enterprises were within the services sector in 2013, providing work for 66.7 % of the total number of persons employed. Services accounted for between 64.3 % of the number of all enterprises in the business economy in Slovakia and 85.4 % of the total in Luxembourg. In terms of its contribution to employment, the services sector accounted for 54.0 % of the workforce in Czech Republic, while the United Kingdom had the highest share - 78.5 %.

By contrast, only 9.9 % of active enterprises in the EU were found in industry, even though these enterprises provided work for 24.1 % of the total number of persons employed. The difference between these shares provides evidence that the average size of industrial enterprises (as measured in terms of the number of persons employed) was considerably higher than for services. Indeed, industrial enterprises employed 13 persons on average across the 27 Member States that compile the EU aggregate, compared to an average of five persons for services. The average number of persons employed in construction was similar to that in services, at four persons per enterprise.

Looking at birth rates, one of key determinants of job creation and growth, in the EU (based on data available for 27 Member States), the number of newly born enterprises as a proportion of the total number of active enterprises increased by 6.7 % in 2013 compared with 2012. The birth rates range from 3.6 % in Belgium to 23 % in Lithuania (as for the Czech Republic, enterprise birth rate reached around 9% in 2012 and 8% in 2013).

The average enterprise death rate for the business economy in 2012 was 9.5 % (0.4 percentage points higher than the birth rate). The highest difference was reported in Hungary, where the death rates were significantly greater than birth rates, followed by Portugal and Czech Republic. This situation was, however, reverse in France, Belgium and Malta, where the birth rates were more than 80 % higher than the death rates in 2012. Nevertheless, in the Czech Republic, the trend of enterprise death rates was declining in 2012-2013.

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