§ Mr. Michael McGuireasked the Secretary of State for Employment what is the total number of people employed in the United Kingdom by those companies designated as small businesses giving details of: the number of males and females employed, and the number of small businesses employing under 10, under 20, under 30 and under 40, and so on up to the agreed definition of what constitutes a small business.
§ Mr. Jim LesterComprehensive information is not available about the size of businesses. Some indication can be obtained from the annual censuses of employment, which, however, provide information relating to individual workplaces rather than to complete businesses. The census unit—which is the basic unit for which information is reported—is normally a complete individual address such as a shop, office or factory. Separate branches of businesses thus constitute separate units. Also in some cases there can be more than one census unit for a single address. This happens where a firm supplies information for different groups of employees—for example, the monthly and weekly paid—on separate 693W returns. The census does not cover the many small businesses consisting wholly of self-employed.
There is no single definition of a small firm applicable to all sectors of the economy. The following table gives details of census units in size bands up to 199 employees. The figures relate to all industries and services except agriculture and horticulture and private domestic service. Separate figures for males and females are not available.
CENSUS OF EMPLOYMENT: 1976 UNITED KINGDOM Numbers of census units and employees by size band Size bands according to Numbers of employees Numbers of census units (thousands) Numbers of employees (thousands) 1–10 770.3 2,898.7 11–24 153.4 2,432.2 25–49 68.7 2,348.4 50–99 34.9 2,406.9 100–199 18.8 2,601.5 Total 1–199 1,046.1 12,687.7