§ Mrs. Renée Shortasked the Secretary of State for Employment how many people are currently employed in small businesses of 20 employees or under; and how many were employed in such businesses in April.
§ Mr. Jim LesterThe precise information requested is not available.
Some indication of the number of people employed in small businesses can be obtained from the annual censuses of employment which provide information 22W relating to "census units", described below. These units represent individual work places rather than complete businesses. The latest information on this basis is for 1976 when some 2,833,000 employees in Great Britain were working at units with one to 10 employees and 2,377,000 at units with 11 to 24 employees. The figures cover all industries and services except agriculture and horticulture and private domestic service.
The census unit—the basic unit for which information is reported—is normally a complete individual address, such as a shop, office or factory. Separate branches of both large and small 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 business supplies information for different groups of people—for example, the monthly and weekly paid—on separate returns. Thus the numbers of employees working at small census units exceeds the numbers working for small businesses.