§ 32. Mr. David Mitchellasked the Secretary of State for Employment what is the latest estimate of the numbers employed in small firms including self-employed.
§ Mr. GoldingThe information requested is not available in full from my Department's statistics.
In respect of employees, some indication can be obtained from the Annual Censuses of Employment. These, however, provide information relating to individual workplaces rather than to complete businesses and do not include employees in private domestic service, agriculture and horticulture. The basic unit for which information is reported, "the census unit", is normally a complete individual address such as a shop, office or factory. The branches of multiple firms thus constitute separate units. In some cases there can be more than one census unit for a single address. This happens where the firm supplies information for different groups of employees, e.g. the monthly and weekly paid, on separate returns.
At June 1975, the latest date for which information is available, the numbers of employees at census units in Great Britain with 1–10, 11–49 and 50–199 employees were 2,689,000, 4,598,000 and 4,857,000 respectively.
The total number of self-employed persons in Great Britain at the same date is estimated to be 1,864,000. No analysis by size of firm is available, but its is probable that the majority would be in small firms.