SMEs employed almost 69% of the workforce in Ireland in 2020

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) employed almost 69% of the workforce in Ireland in 2020, figures show.

According to the Central Statistics Office (CSO), there were 291,489 enterprises in the non-financial Irish business economy in 2020, at the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Collectively, the 50 largest enterprises in Ireland by were responsible for 59.7% of all gross value added GVA in the non-financial Irish business economy in 2020.

By contrast, these enterprises accounted for 5.5% of all people engaged.

The CSO publication outlines the key statistics for the Irish business economy in 2020.

Business demography data is used to analyse the number of enterprises and employment across the five sectors of industry, construction, distribution, services, and financial and insurance.

In 2020, the services sector accounted for almost half of all wages and salaries paid in Ireland’s non-financial business economy.

People engaged in the industrial sector enjoyed the highest average sectoral wage in Ireland in 2020, at 53,755 euro.

Eamonn Cleary, statistician in the business statistics division, said: “There were 291,489 active enterprises in the non-financial Irish business economy in 2020, with 1,598,643 persons engaged in total.

“Total turnover for the business economy was 816 billion euro.

“Services enterprises represented 37.3% of this total, while Industrial enterprises accounted for 36.7%.”

GVA for the business economy was 275.8 billion euro, of which gross operating surplus (GOS) was 215.8 billion euro and personnel costs were 60 billion euro.

Large enterprises, those with 250 or more persons engaged, accounted for two-thirds of all GVA in the Irish business economy and 58.1% of turnover.

There were 8,342 foreign-owned multinationals operating in Ireland in 2020, with 457,990 persons engaged.

These enterprises had turnover of 581.9 billion euro and GVA of 201.6 billion euro.

By contrast, there were 283,147 Irish-owned enterprises, which had 1,140,653 persons engaged.

Their turnover was 234.1 billion euro, and GVA was 74.2 billion euro.

The Covid-19 pandemic had a notable effect on the Retail Sales Index (RSI) in Ireland in 2020, with the highest seasonally adjusted monthly decrease in the volume of retail sales in April related to the first lockdown, followed by a sharp recovery in May 2020 (+29.8%) and June 2020 (+36.6%) as the country re-opened.

There was also significant use of Covid-19 related income support schemes in Ireland in 2020.

For instance, in April 2020, 57.3% of all enterprises had personnel who availed of at least one of the Pandemic Unemployment Payment (PUP) or the Wage Subsidy Schemes.