Entrepreneurs in business enterprise sector

Enterprise
In the business entrepreneur statistics, the legal unit is defined as the enterprise.

Legal form
Type of organisation registered in the Central Coordinating Register for Legal Entities (CCR). A distinction is made between sole proprietorships, public limited companies, general partnerships etc.

Personally owned enterprises
Personally owned enterprises refer to the legal forms sole proprietorships, general partnerships and general partnerships with shared liability.

General partnership and general partnership with shared liability
Must have at least two partners, and these partners are known as partners with joint liability and partners with unlimited liability, respectively. The partners are personally and economically responsible. In a general partnership, all partners can be claimed for the total debt of the company, but in a general partnership with shared liability every partner is personally liable for a certain part of the company's debt. In total, the partners are liable for the whole debt. Both physical persons and body cooperates can be partners. Having a board and/or manager is optional. In the tables, only enterprises with physical persons as partners are included, and only the active roles are included.

Sole proprietorship
A sole proprietorship must have one, and only one, owner. The owner is fully and personally responsible for the whole enterprise, and needs to be a physical person. It is possible to employ a manager who is someone other than the owner.

Public limited liability company and private limited liability company
These are organisational structures in which none of the owners have personal responsibility for the company's liability. The owners' responsibility for the company's debt is restricted to the share capital. A private limited liability company cannot, unlike a public limited liability company, receive share capital from the public.

All public limited liability companies and private limited liability companies must have a board of directors. This board must as a main rule consist of at least three members. In limited companies that have less than NOK 3 million in share capital, the board can consist of two members in addition to a deputy. All public limited liability companies and private limited liability companies with share capital of more than NOK 3 million must in addition have a manager.

New enterprise
In the business entrepreneur statistics, an enterprise is defined as new in the year it was registered, regardless of whether it had activity in the form of turnover or employed persons. Enterprises established in connection with a business takeover are excluded. Reactivations, i.e. enterprises that became active again after at least 2 years of continuous inactivity, are not considered new enterprises in the business entrepreneur statistics.

Survival
An enterprise is considered to have survived if it has activity in the form of turnover or employment, and has not had 2 or more consecutive years of inactivity since its establishment. Enterprises that are inactive for 1 year, then resume activity, are considered dormant in the inactive year, and as survivors again from the year the activity is resumed.

Survival by change of ownership: An enterprise is also considered to have survived if it has ceased to be active, but its activity has been taken over by another new legal unit created specifically to take over the production factors of the first enterprise. The new legal unit here represents the surviving enterprise, and takes over the establishing year from the old one. The age of the enterprise is calculated from that year, and the enterprise growth is calculated across the two legal units. Survival by change of ownership is relatively rare.

Entrepreneur
The entrepreneurs of a personally owned enterprise are the holder or participants at the time of establishment.

An entrepreneur of a limited liability company is defined as a person or an enterprise with an ownership interest (in share capital) above a certain limit in the newly established enterprise, or who at the time of establishment has an ownership interest and is the general manager, chairman of the board, deputy chairman or board member of the same enterprise. The person may be a shareholder directly in the enterprise or indirectly via another enterprise.

The requirement for indirect ownership is that the establishing enterprise is owned by only persons, in which case these persons are considered to be entrepreneurs. Otherwise, the establishing enterprise is considered to be the entrepreneur. If a person has both direct and indirect ownership in an enterprise, these ownership interests are combined. The ownership requirement is:

- 100 percent of a company with 1 shareholder

- at least 40 percent of a company with 2 shareholders

- at least 30 percent of a company with 3 shareholders

- at least 20 percent of a company with 4 or more shareholders

Personal entrepreneurs are also called founders.

Age
refers to the age of the founder at the end of the reference year.

Immigrants
People with an immigrant background include people born abroad or in Norway, with two foreign-born parents and four foreign-born grandparents.

National background
for immigrants is their own country of birth, defined (mainly) as their mother's place of residence at the time of their own birth. For Norwegian-born people with an immigrant background, it is the mother's country of birth. For people without an immigrant background, Norway is their national background.

Employees
The number of employees includes all persons who work for the enterprise for at least 1 hour per week, in an employment relationship or on a fee basis (freelancers, etc.). Persons with more than one employment relationship may be counted as employees in several enterprises. In the statistics, the number of employees is considered the average for the entire year, including in the year of establishment.

Employment (Persons employed)
The number of employees includes all employees plus any employed owners. Partnerships have 2 employed owners if the turnover is above a given limit (200,000 NOK in 2021, adjusted for inflation in other years), and sole proprietorships have 1 employed owner if the turnover is above a given limit (100,000 NOK in 2021, adjusted for inflation in other years). The number of employees is calculated as an average over the entire year, including in the year of establishment.

Turnover
Turnover is defined as the sum of remuneration of sale to customers, sale of commercial goods and gross income from other industry activities. The turnover includes rental income and commissions receivable, but not public assistance or gain by sale of fixed assets. VAT is not included in the figures. In some industries within finance and insurance, the concept of turnover is not clearly defined, and in these industries alternative measures are used as defined in EU Regulation 2019/2152.

Growth in employment
Employment growth is the development in the number of employed people measured against the previous year.

Municipality and county
The municipality and county where the founded enterprise's business address is located.

Standard for industrial classification (SN2007)
The industrial classification is based on the Norwegian Standard for industrial classification (SN2007), which in turn is based on the EU industrial classification standard NACE Rev.2.

Norwegian standard for classification of educations (NUS)
The education is classified according to the Norwegian standard for classification of educations (NUS) which was first established by Statistics Norway in 1970.

Standard for classification of persons with an immigration background
Immigration background is classified according to Statistics Norway's Standard for country codes (SSB-3).

Standard for classification of institutional sector
The population of established enterprises is defined using sectors defined in Statistics Norway's Standard for classification of institutional sector.

Number of entrepreneurs. An entrepreneur is usually a person, but can also be another enterprise. The entrepreneurs are counted once for each enterprise they founded in the relevant year.

Name: Entrepreneurs in business enterprise sector
Topic: Establishments, enterprises and accounts

Division for R&D, Technology and Business dynamics statistics

Founders of personally owned enterprises are published per municipality, while limited liability companies are published only for the entire country.

For founders of personally owned enterprises distributed according to the survival and growth of the enterprises, the figures are published per county.

Frequency: Annual

Currentness: The statistics are published approximately 6 months after the end of the accounting year. For founders of AS and ASA, the figures for the latest year are preliminary.

Not relevant.

Collected and revised data are stored securely by Statistics Norway in compliance with applicable legislation on data processing.

Statistics Norway can grant access to the source data (de-identified or anonymised microdata) on which the statistics are based, for researchers and public authorities for the purposes of preparing statistical results and analyses. Access can be granted upon application and subject to conditions. Refer to the details about this at Access to data from Statistics Norway.

The quality of the basic data is ensured during preparation of the primary statistics in which they are included (structural business statistics, register-based labor market statistics, accounting statistics, stock market statistics, etc.).

When the revision in 2024 (see Purpose and history) took place, the new time series were checked against the old ones. Deviations were explained and any errors were corrected.

Purpose: The statistics primarily describe the entrepreneurs and the new enterprises they establish. In addition, it shows the characteristics of entrepreneurs and owners of enterprises that survive for 1-5 years. Entrepreneurs can be either individuals (in which case they are called founders) or enterprises.

History: The first publication was in 2004 and contained statistics on entrepreneurs of new personally owned enterprises in 2003. From the reference year 2004, figures for entrepreneurs of limited liability companies were also included. Figures for survival and growth were first published in 2006, and cover personally owned enterprises established from the year 2002.

In 2024, the entrepreneur statistics were revised, following a corresponding revision of the business demography the previous year. This led to some changes in the figures, but mostly in the distribution between categories and less in the total levels (exception: the 2005 cohort received a much higher total level because a certain group of enterprises within in the financial industry is now included, which were previuosly not).

Users of the statistics are public administration, educational institutions, research communities, the media, business and industry, and ministries.

No external users have access to statistics before they are released at 8 a.m. on ssb.no after at least three months’ advance notice in the release calendar. This is one of the most important principles in Statistics Norway for ensuring the equal treatment of users.

There is a certain connection between the entrepreneur statistics, which are mainly a personal statistics related to the establishment of new enterprises, and some enterprise based statistics. However, there may be several entrepreneurs behind one enterprise, and therefore there are more entrepreneurs in total than new enterprises.

In addition, there are some definitional differences:

• Compared to the business demography (version "registered enterprises"), reactivated enterprises are omitted from the entrepreneur statistics, since these are not "real" new establishings. In addition, the basic unit in the business demography is the "statistical enterprise" (the smallest combination of legal units that can make independent decisions), but the "legal unit" in the entrepreneur statistics.
• The Brønnøysund Register of Entities (ER) includes all legal units, including those that do not conduct business activities. The entrepreneur statistics only include business activities, and the enrtepreneur must be identifiable using role information in ER or the Register of Shareholders.

The statistics are developed, produced and disseminated pursuant to Act no. 32 of 21 June 2019 relating to official statistics and Statistics Norway (the Statistics Act).

Not relevant.

Personally owned enterprises: 2002 onwards.

Limited liability company: 2004 onwards.

The statistics cover entrepreneurs of enterprises within market-oriented activities. Entrepreneurs are mostly individuals, but there are also enterprises that establish other enterprises. The population is delimited by characteristics of both the entrepreneurs and the established enterprises.

Entrepreneurs: These are personal owners with a role in the enterprise, or owners (persons or enterprises) with a total ownership stake above a given limit (see Definitions), at the time of the establishing. It is these owners that are covered by the statistics.

New enterprises and enterprises surviving for up to 5 years: Only new enterprises are considered as establishings. Reactivations are excluded. In some tables, the survival of established enterprises for up to 5 years is also followed.

Legal form: Established enterprises with the following legal forms are covered: Sole proprietorship (ENK), general partnership (ANS) and joint-stock company (DA), as well as limited liability companies (AS) and public limited liability companies (ASA). Exceptions: ANS and DA with only enterprises as founders are excluded. Establishing of other legal forms than these five is not included.

Industry: Establishing within all industries are covered, with two exceptions: Primary industries (01, 02 and 03) and public administration and defence, and compulsory social security (84).

Sector: The statistics also cover establishing within all institutional sectors, except the public sector (central and local government, and Norges Bank). The exception for the public sector applies, even if the enterprises operate in industries that are included in the statistics. State lending institutions, enterprises within the state's business operations, state-owned enterprises, state enterprises, municipal business operations and independent municipal enterprises are not considered to be public sector.

For industries that contain a mixture of public and private service provision, the statistics must be interpreted in light of the fact that the public sector is excluded. This primarily concerns Electricity and gas supply (35), Water supply, sewerage, waste (36-39), Education (85), Human health, social work (86-88) and Other service activities (94-96).

The entrepreneur statistics is based on basic data from the business demography, where the Business Register is the main source, the stock market statistics, where the Shareholder Register and the Share Register are the central sources, the immigrant statistics based on the Population Register, the education statistics with the National Education Database as the main source, and role information in the Legal entity register (CCR). When preparing these various statistics, the information in the registers is prepared through quality assurance and processing, and it is this prepared information that is collected in the entrepreneur statistics.

The business demography is mainly based on Statistics Norway's Business Register (BR). BR is a comprehensive register with all relevant enterprises and establishments in the private and public sectors in Norway, prepared for statistical production. The register contains variables such as organization number, name, address, legal form, industry, sector, employees, employed, turnover, status/activity information, etc. Employees (wage earners) and employed persons are based on register-based labour market statistics, of which "A-ordningen" is a main source, and have undergone an extra quality check when compiling the Structural business statistics (SBS). Turnover is based on accounting data from, among other things, business statements, accounting data and tax return data for self-employed persons, and has also undergone an extra quality check when compiling the SBS.

In the business demography, the enterprise's registration date and the activity data employment and turnover are obtained from BR, in addition to activity data from some other sources (accounting, business statements and VAT statements) where BR does not cover well. This data is used to identify the year of establishing, enterprise age and survival of the enterprises, events such as reactivation of enterprises, establishing through take-over and change of ownership, as well as various measures of enterprise growth.

The Shareholder Register (Areg) and the Share Register (AR) have been established by the Norwegian Tax Directorate (SKD) and contain information about all limited liability companies in Norway, their shareholders and their shareholdings. The first edition of Areg and AR is for the income year 2004. The registers contain the company's organization number, identification of the shareholder (birth registration number, organization number, etc.), as well as information about the number of shares, share capital, share premium and distributed dividends. Shareholders can be individuals or companies. If the shareholder is registered without a birth registration number or own organization number, it is placed in the category "other". There is a preliminary and final version of the shareholder register for each reference year, but for the latest statistical year there is only a preliminary version.

The information in the shareholder register makes it possible to calculate the ownership share of each individual shareholder in an enterprise. The ownership shares are calculated as of 31 December of the statistical year.

The role information in the Legal Entity Register (CCR) provides an overview of all persons and enterprises that have roles in Norwegian business. Persons are registered with a personal identification number or D-number, while enterprises are registered with an organization number. No one can register an enterprise in CCR without also registering a role holder. Different legal forms require different role holders. The information about personal role holders in CCR is updated continuously, and is washed against data from the Central Population Register every week.

Statistics Norway's population register (BeReg) is based on information from the National Population Register, in accordance with the Population Registration Act and regulations to the act. The Population Register receives ongoing information about births, deaths, marriages, divorces, relocations, etc.

The National Education Database (NUDB) contains information about the population's highest level of education. NUDB contains all registrations of completed and started education for residents of Norway who are 16 years of age or older as of 1 October of the current year, and education is counted as of 1 January of the year following the statistical year. The educational activity that has the highest level in the education standard (NUS2000) and is registered in NUDB indicates the highest education for the individual person.

The statistics do not have their own data collection or editing, but are based on existing, fully edited data sources from other statistics in Statistics Norway. By editing we mean checking, examining and changing data.

The basic data consists of three main parts, as well as two additional sources.

1: Microdata from the business demography. From here, characteristics of the enterprise are obtained such as legal form, industry and sector, the year of establishment of the enterprises, enterprise age and survival, as well as the number of employees (wage earners) and growth in employment from the previous year. Based on this source, the population of established enterprises is also delimited.

2: The Shareholder Register and the Share Register. Ownership is calculated for shareholders, based on share capital per shareholder in the shareholder register. If the shareholder is an enterprise, and this is owned only by individuals, the owners of the shareholder enterprise (i.e. the individuals) are considered shareholders. Foreign shareholders and shareholders who cannot be identified due to incomplete information in the registers are placed in the ownership category "other". Both preliminary and final data are collected for all years from 2015 to the penultimate year, as a basis for estimating preliminary figures for the latest year.

3: Role information in the Legal Entity Register (CCR). Role information for the personal founders is collected from here. For personally owned enterprises, the participants' ownership shares are also given here. Extracts from the end of each quarter are used, and the role holders are identified successively, by increasing quarter, so that the information is as close as possible to the establishment in time.

In addition, information on immigrant background is collected from the Population Register (BeReg) and educational level from the National Education Database (NUDB).

The various data sources are linked together, and ownership share combined with role information is used to define the population of entrepreneurs. Persons' gender and age are derived from their personal identification number. The standard classifications are recoded into appropriate categories, and the data are summarized into tables.

Preliminary figures for limited liability companies are calculated by autoregression between preliminary and final figures back to 2015.

Not relevant.

Employees of Statistics Norway have a duty of confidentiality.

Statistics Norway does not publish figures if there is a risk of the respondent’s contribution being identified. This means that, as a general rule, figures are not published if fewer than three units form the basis of a cell in a table or if the contribution of one or two respondents constitutes a very large part of the cell total.

Statistics Norway can make exceptions to the general rule if deemed necessary to meet the requirements of the EEA agreement, if the respondent is a public authority, if the respondent has consented to this, or when the information disclosed is openly accessible to the public.

More information can be found on Statistics Norway’s website under Methods in official statistics, in the ‘Confidentiality’ section.

Changes in methods and definitions have been carried back through the time series, so that the figures can be compared from year to year.

Enterprise growth: The number of employees and employed is measured as an average for the entire year, also in the year of establishment. There are therefore particularly many enterprises with measured growth at age 1 year.

Increased data input: In 2021, data input for turnover from industries 85 Education, 86-88 Human health and social work, and 90-93 Arts, entertainment and recreation increased. Turnover is used together with employment to define the survival of enterprises. Changes from 2020 to 2021 related to the number of surviving enterprises must therefore be interpreted with caution.

A-ordningen: In 2015, A-ordningen took over as the reporting channel for the number of employees, after NAV's Aa-register. Freelancers and others who work for a fee were now included, and very small positions of > 1 hour per week were also included, while the previous limit was > 4 hours per week. At the same time, the reporting routine was changed. Overall, the changes could have an impact in both directions, but in general the numbers became higher. This resulted in a break in the data for the number of employees and employed this year, which affects both distributions by size and the number of enterprises with growth in employment.

Revised industry standard: In 2008, a new industry standard (SN 2007) was introduced. Tables by industry therefore go back no further than this year.

Transitional rule E: In 2005, a very large number of enterprises were established within the financial industry, as a result of a temporary exemption from capital gains taxation for persons who transferred all their shares to a holding company. The high number of establishings in the wake of the rule had a significant impact on the total level of establishings this year.

Alle, unntatt offentlig sektor.

Year

Enterprise data
The statistics are based on statistical and administrative sources. Several administrative registers are central to the work of updating BR and are used both to define the population and to collect characteristics and information. The Legal Entity Register (CCR), annual accounts, business statements, tax returns for self-employed persons, the VAT register and A-ordningen are used to collect information about the units. These contain register errors that can affect the uncertainty in the statistics. As the sources have undergone quality control in the various statistics in Statistics Norway, it is the quality-assured information that is used, but errors and uncertainty cannot be ruled out here either.

A common type of register error is outdated information as a result of a backlog in registrations, and that it takes time for Statistics Norway to check the information against other sources. This can lead to outdated information being used as the data basis. Around 2020, the proportion of new enterprises with unknown industries increased significantly, which affects distributions by industry.

Shareholder data
Errors in the shareholder data may be due to the limited liability company having filled out the shareholder statement in an incorrect, imprecise or incomplete manner. For example, the personal identification number or the shareholder company's organization number is missing for some shareholders, and these are then placed in the category "other establishers" together with foreign shareholders. Dropouts (i.e. the enterprise is not in the register for various reasons) are another source of error. In recent years, dropouts have been between 3 and 7 percent for the population of active enterprises as a whole, and probably somewhat higher for newly established ones. In the stock market statistics, machine and manual checks are carried out to improve the quality of the data before they are used for statistics.

Role data
The requirement to report role data to the Single Register is based on, among other things, the Legal Entity Register Act and the Limited Liabillity Companies Act. No separate checks have been made on the quality of this information when compiling these statistics, but since the roles must be reported when establishing new enterprises, it is assumed that the quality is good at the time of establishment.

Population data
The quality of the data from the National Population Register is generally very good for statistical purposes. However, a relevant source of error is delayed reports, which can lead to events being registered and counted in the wrong calendar year.

The National Population Register consists of people who have a Norwegian personal identity number, and people with a D number. Some of the people with a D number are people who live abroad but work in Norway. These will not receive anything other than a D number, while people who move to Norway will eventually receive a Norwegian personal identity number. It can therefore be difficult to distinguish between immigrants who have moved to Norway and people who live abroad. Another problem can be people who receive different personal identity numbers as a result of new information about their date of birth, etc.

Education data
There may be insufficient information in the Population Register about immigrants' education before they came to Norway. Beyond this, the Population Register is a very good source of statistics on education level.

A revision is a planned change to figures that have already been published, for example when releasing final figures as a follow-up to published preliminary figures.

Preliminary figures: In the entrepreneur statistics, figures in the latest reference year for limited liability companies are preliminary.

Methodological changes: In 2024, some methodological changes were made, as described in the article Changes in the establishment statistics (Norwegian only). To avoid breaks in the statistics, the old time series were replaced by new ones.

See also Statistics Norway’s principles for revisions.