Australian Business Statistics 2025

Overall, there were 2,662,998 actively trading businesses in Australia as of 30 June 2024, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

To put that into perspective, there's just shy of one Australian business for every 10 people in the country.

There was a 2.8% increase in the number of businesses operating at the end of FY 2023/24 compared to the start of the year, or 73,125 extra businesses. That rate of growth is slightly higher than it was in 2022/23 (+2.0%), but down on the 2021/22 when the growth in business numbers was twice as high (+5.6%).

Here's how the number of businesses has changed over the years...

And here's the total broken down by type of business.

The company structure dominates (43%), followed by sole proprietors (30%), trusts (18%), then partnerships (8%).

The remainder (only 395) are public sector businesses.

According to Dr Pratiti Chatterjee, Senior Lecturer in Economics at the University of Western Australia, new businesses opening in large numbers is encouraging to see in the short term, but doesn't necessarily translate to longer-term growth.

“After three or five years, you probably see that a lot of these businesses have exited the economy due to the fact that they're not sufficiently productive or adding as much value as was expected,” she said.

“In terms of a very broad picture, smaller businesses are really having a tougher time.

“The hospitality sector in particular is seeing dwindling profit margins, coupled with the fact that households have tight budget constraints right now, which means room for discretionary spending is lower.”

The challenges facing many Australian businesses are reflected in the increasing number of companies entering external administration, rising by 39.2% between FY 2022/23 and FY 2023/24.

Of course, some sectors of the economy can weather turbulence better than others.

Let's look at the current industry-by-industry business number breakdown.

Construction remains Australia's largest industry by number of businesses operating. It grew by 2.0% (+8,949 businesses) in 2023-24.

Transport, Postal and Warehousing (+8.5%), Health Care and Social Assistance (+7.7%), and Financial and Insurance Services (+4.8%) were the sectors with the biggest growth last year in terms of the number of businesses operating.

Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing (-1.3%) and Retail Trade (-1.4%) were the only industries to record a decline in total number of businesses operating in 2023/24.