Almost 98% of all businesses are small businesses.
There were 2,506,012 small businesses operating in Australia in June 2022.
The number of small businesses increased by 164,172, or 7%, from the year before.
A common definition of small business used by the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) are those businesses with a turnover of $10 million or less. Using this definition, 98% of Australian businesses are small businesses.
The vast majority (93%) of these businesses have a turnover of less than $2 million.
Table 1: Business numbers by annual turnover, June 2022
Annual turnover | Number of businesses | % of total businesses |
Zero to less than $50,000 | 699,077 | 27.2 |
$50,000 to less than $200,000 | 823,844 | 32.1 |
$200,000 to less than $2m | 856,169 | 33.3 |
$2m to less than $5m | 108,939 | 4.2 |
$5m to less than $10m | 39,227 | 1.5 |
$10m or more | 42,644 | 1.7 |
Total | 2,569,900 | 100 |
Source: ABS Counts of Australian Business 8165.0, Table 17, June 2022 and ASBFEO calculations.
Chart 1: Number of Australian businesses measured by employment size in June 2022
Source: ABS Counts of Australian Business, Table 13a, August 2022 and ASBFEO calculations (excludes businesses that are not registered for GST).
