Analysis of the Business base in Scotland compared to European Nations

Executive summary

This paper compares Scotland’s business base to other European nations and the small EU nations Scotland’s performance is being tracked against for the Government Economic Strategy.  Analysis found:

• Scotland has a smaller overall business base than the UK and other European countries
• is just above EU average for firms with 250 or more employees
• is just below EU average for firms with between 10 and 249 employees
• is well below EU average for firms with fewer than 10 employees
• the number of firms required for Scotland to meet the EU average for those sectors where comparable data was available is 170,963
• across all sectors it is likely that the gap would actually be far higher
• the main gap is in the number of firms with between 1 and 9 employees

Compared to the small EU nations:

• Scotland is under represented in every category with the exception of large firms
• The number of firms required for Scotland to meet the small EU nations’ average is 162,844 for those sectors where comparable data was available
• the main gap is in the number of firms with between 1 and 9 employees
• the employment rate in Scotland compares favourably with these benchmark countries.