Finnish Entrepreneurship Review

Now it's out. The annual Entrepreneurship Review (by the Ministry of Employment and the Economy) overviews the trends in entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial activity in Finland. The following is taken from the Summary:

According to an estimate, a total of around 270.000 enterprises were active in Finland at the end of 2010, excluding primary production enterprises. At present, the number of enterprises is experiencing a slight upswing. There were nearly 50 enterprises per 1.000 people in Finland at the end of last year. The number of start-ups began to increase, and the number of enterprises that terminated their operations reduced markedly compared to the previous year.

The percentage of SMEs (with less than 250 employees) from the enterprise population was 99.8%. Micros with less than ten employees accounted for 93.4 per cent of all SMEs, and the majority of micro-enterprises employed less than two people (calculated on the basis of one year of employment). Finland had more than 600 large enterprises with a staff of at least 250.

At the end of 2009, the total number of entrepreneurs in Finland was approximately 248.000, excluding those in the agriculture and forestry sectors, i.e. ten per cent of employed people. Of these, 62 per cent were self-employed. At the end of 2009, there were some 82.000 female entrepreneurs, constituting one-third of all entrepreneurs.

Report (in Finnish) can be downloaded from here.