Commerce and personal services, Services to companies, Construction and Hospitality and restoration are the four sectors in which more is undertaken in Spain, concentrating 69% of the total entrepreneurship. This result indicates that the entrepreneurship of recent years intensifies the pattern of specialization of the Spanish economy. This follows from the I Report on Entrepreneurship and young companies that create employment, prepared by the Spanish Confederation of Guarantee Companies (SGR-CESGAR), which also indicates that the average level of entrepreneurship in Spain (relative weight of the people who have undertaken in the period analyzed on the whole of employment) is 5.5% of employment, that is, More than 5 out of every 100 people employed have undertaken in recent years.
This new report, prepared by SGR-CESGAR, is part of the “SMEs and financing” project and seeks to contribute to a better understanding of entrepreneurship initiatives in the period of economic recovery (2013-2017). And, entrepreneurs (people who have started in a self-employment relationship between 2013 and 2017) are key to the growth and renewal of the productive fabric, but it is known that they find greater obstacles in access to financing, due mainly due to its small business size, lack of experience and financial knowledge, as well as its low negotiating capacity.
In many cases, these difficulties compromise the viability or economic expansion of these types of companies, so the guarantee system can have a very important role in supporting them. In fact, the percentage of companies in need of guarantees or guarantees increased in 2018, as indicated by the VIII Report on Financing of SMEs in Spain, also prepared by SGR-CESGAR. In this sense, 21% of SMEs and freelancers to whom the national guarantee system granted guarantees in 2018 were entrepreneurs, contributing to the maintenance of 20,126 jobs.
Sectors in which more is undertaken
The I Report on Entrepreneurship and young companies that create employment analyzes the latest data from the Continuous Sample of Work Lives (MCVL) *, indicating that the sectors that concentrate entrepreneurship are those that have a larger size in the Spanish economy: Commerce and personal services , Business services, Construction and Hospitality and restoration. These sectors represent 51% of total employment registered in 2017 and, as already mentioned, they concentrated 69.1% of total entrepreneurship.
The report, in addition to analyzing the level of entrepreneurship, presents an index of entrepreneurial dynamism, which relates entrepreneurship and self-employment in different regions, sectors or population groups. In this way, it partially discounts the effect of productive specialization and other structural factors on the level of entrepreneurship. This index is obtained by dividing the percentage that a given autonomous community or sector represents in total entrepreneurship nationwide, by the percentage it represents in total self-employment.
Taking into account this index, the Education, Artistic and Recreational Activities, and Telecommunications and Information Society (SI) sectors have registered the highest levels of entrepreneurial dynamism in the analyzed period, 56%, 46% and more. 28%, respectively, at the average level of the economy as a whole. The Construction, Hospitality and Catering and Business Services sectors have a lower level of entrepreneurial dynamism, but also above the average. On the contrary, the less dynamic sectors have been Transport and Post, Agriculture, Energy, Water and Waste and Other Services.
Entrepreneurship by Autonomous Communities
The report also breaks down the different levels of entrepreneurship by autonomous communities. The Balearic Islands, Galicia, Extremadura and the Valencian Community are the communities where it is most undertaken, closely followed by the Canary Islands, Murcia and Andalusia, which also have high levels of entrepreneurship. On the contrary, always according to the data collected in the report, the autonomous communities in which it has undertaken the least are Navarra, La Rioja, Castilla y León, Aragón and the Community of Madrid. These levels of entrepreneurship are closely related to the productive structure – which determines a greater weight of autonomous employment in the regional economy – and the unemployment rates of each autonomous community – the greater unemployment, the greater the presence of the so-called "entrepreneurship by necessity" -. The report also indicates that the average level of entrepreneurship in Spain stands at 5.5% of employment – of every 100 people employed, 5.5 have undertaken in the period analyzed.
Taking into account the Index of entrepreneurial dynamism, in the period studied, the Canary Islands, Andalusia and the Balearic Islands are the autonomous communities where entrepreneurship has grown more in relative terms, with rates 23%, 12% and 10% higher than in the Spanish economy as a whole, respectively. In addition to the three communities already mentioned, the Region of Murcia, the Community of Madrid and the Valencian Community have an entrepreneurial dynamism above the national average. On the contrary, Aragón, La Rioja and Castilla y León show much lower than average levels. Here it is also denoted that, in those autonomous communities where unemployment rates are higher, the “entrepreneurship by necessity” is also higher.
Entrepreneur Profile
Regarding the profile of the entrepreneur, the study indicates that, according to the group analyzed in the Continuous Sample of Work Lives, 62.4% of entrepreneurs are men, compared to 37.6% of women. In addition, most of the people who undertake have primary education or vocational training of medium grade (54.6%). This indicates a high relative weight of those entrepreneurs whose main motivation is self-employment.
Also, most of them are in the range between 25 and 45 years of age (61.3%) and reside in a large city (51.5%). Finally, these data show a greater number of entrepreneurs born in our country (78.5%) and not belonging to groups with special difficulties in accessing employment.
Young companies that create jobs
The report prepared by SGR-CESGAR also analyzes the creation of employment in young companies – those that have hired their first employed person between 2015 and 2017 -. These types of companies are in growth phases and are of special interest because they contribute to job creation and the renewal of the productive fabric. According to the results collected, young companies that create jobs currently represent around 12.7% of the total business productive fabric.
The report indicates that the autonomous communities in which these types of companies have a greater relative weight are the Canary Islands, the Community of Madrid and Andalusia, where they represent percentages higher than 14%. On the other hand, in some communities of the Mediterranean arch, such as Comunidad Valenciana, Murcia, Baleares and Cataluña, they also have a relative importance above the national average. However, in Asturias, the Basque Country, Castilla y León and Navarra, young companies that create jobs do not reach 10% of the total productive fabric.
It should be noted the high coincidence between the group of communities that show a high entrepreneurial dynamism and those that have a greater presence of young companies that create employment.
Importance by activity sectors
The study also measures the relative weight of young companies that create employment in different sectors as an indicator of expansion and renewal of the sectorial productive fabric. In this sense, Hospitality and catering is the sector in which the largest number of young companies are registered, representing 23.0% of the total number of companies. This result may be due to the fact that the period analyzed (2013-2017) includes very positive years for tourism activity in Spain.
This sector is followed at a distance by artistic and recreational activities (16.2%), Telecommunications and information society (15.5%) and Construction (13.3%). On the contrary, the sectors in which these types of companies have a weight of less than 10% are Health activities, Manufacturing, Other services and Social services.
You can access the full report at www.cesgar.es
* Note: This report presents the results of an ad hoc exploitation of the Continuous Sample of Work Lives (MCVL) for the year 2017, latest edition available. The analysis is based on a sample of almost 700,000 employed workers, of which, around 124,000 are self-employed and of them, in turn, 38,078 are enterprising people. Likewise, we have worked with a sample of 282,000 companies that have employed persons (employers) and with a subsample of 35,700 young companies.