The Structural and Demographic Business Statistics (SDBS) 2009 follows previous publications in this area in 2003 and 2006, and shows an improved coverage, comparability and quality of statistics over the years. The publication presents three datasets: the Structural Statistics for Industry and Services (SSIS) dataset; the Business Statistics by Size Class (BSC) dataset; and the Business Demography (BD) dataset. The first two contain information on key economic variables such as value-added, turnover and number of employees, broken down by detailed industrial classification, and for the BSC dataset, by employment size. The third dataset provides information on enterprise birth, death and survival rates.

The OECD collects and develops a wide range of statistics on businesses and business activity. This publication presents the Structural and Demographic Business Statistics (SDBS) Database, i.e. the data collection by the Statistics Directorate relating to a number of key variables, such as value-added, operating surplus, employment, and the number of business units, broken down by industries and size classes.

The tables that follow provide an illustration of the data available in the BD dataset. Data are presented for the following ISIC Rev. 3.1 industry groupings: C (mining and quarrying), D (manufacturing), E (electricity, gas and water), F (construction), G (wholesale trade and retail trade; repairs, etc.), H (hotels and restaurants), I (transport, storage and communications), K (real estate, renting and business activities), M (education), N (health and social work) and O (other community, social and personal services).

The Structural Statistics for Industry and Services (SSIS) database and Business statistics by Size Class (BSC) database contain information by ISIC 4-digit group, wherever possible, on the following variables. The harmonised definitions used are described for each variable in turn below.