Lead Story
Issue No. 39 - February/March 2008
Micro Maturity
by Professor Richard Blandy
Small businesses are those that employ less than 20 people and nearly 96% of Australian businesses - about 1.9 million - fall into that category.1
Micro-businesses are those that employ between one and four people. Nearly 25% of Australian businesses, about 0.5 million, are micro-businesses.
Personal businesses are operated solely by their principals and nearly 59% of Australian businesses, about 1.1 million, are personal businesses.
Small firms employ just under half (47.2%) of the people at work in the private sector, with a quarter (25.8%) working in personal and micro-businesses.2
These figures are slightly less than, but broadly reflect world norms - and we are trending towards the world marks.
In the United States, small businesses employ more than half of America’s private sector workers, produce over half of America’s non-farm private GDP, and create about three-quarters of new private sector jobs in the US economy.
The typical European business enterprise is a micro-business employing three people. Small businesses employ more than 53% of Europe’s workforce and are responsible for half of Europe’s total turnover.
In Australia (and SA) employment growth in personal, micro and small businesses has been outstripping employment growth in medium and large businesses, including in manufacturing.3
The latest comparable data, for 1984 to 2001 years, show 66,000 jobs were created in medium and large businesses in SA while more than 76,000 were created in small businesses, of which about 34,000 were in personal and micro-businesses.4
More than 80% of personal businesses in Australia are home-based. About 30% of home-based businesses are run by women and about 30% of home-based business operators are more than 50 years old.
It’s interesting that the propensity of migrants to work mainly from home increases the longer they live in Australia.5
People working in smal...
