Size analysis of businesses: 2018

Main points

• In 2018, 38.0% of private sector employment in Wales was accounted for by large enterprises (those with 250 or more employees), compared with 39.9% for the UK as a whole.
• Between 2003 and 2018, the proportion of employment in the large size-band fell by 3.6 percentage points in Wales.
• In 2018, around 0.5% of enterprises active in Wales were non-UK owned, accounting for 13.9% of employment in 2018, up from 13.6% in 2017.
• There was considerable variation between industry sectors, with employment in agriculture dominated by micro businesses (90.3%) and employment in production industries concentrated in the large size-band (48.7%).
• Within Wales, the local authorities with the largest proportion of private sector employment in the large size-band were Newport and Cardiff (53.1% and 52.7%, respectively), and the smallest was Powys (18.5%).