Entrepreneurs in business enterprise sector

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

Division for R&D, Technology and Business dynamics statistics

Municipality

Frequency: Annual

Currentness: The statistics are published approximately 6 months after the end of the accounting year. 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 and 2025 (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).

In 2025, it became clear that the way in which entrepreneurs were defined, in that each entrepreneur was counted once for each enterprise they helped to establish, was not satisfactory. In addition, the table layout was inappropriate, in that establishments of enterprises with different legal forms were placed in separate tables with separate divisions. This created the impression that there were more entrepreneurs in Norway than there actually were (double counting), and also made it difficult to get a comprehensive picture of Norwegian entrepreneurs across company forms. This led to a new restructuring of the statistics in that year, based on a further development of the restructured production system from 2024, with new tables containing time series back to 2004. These tables provide figures for unique entrepreneurs (without double counting), as well as unique established enterprises and so-called entrepreneur interests, which correspond to what was previously called "entrepreneurs" in these statistics. Similar terms are used for owners of enterprises that have survived for 1-5 years. In addition, the tables have been reorganized so that all the legal forms included in the statistics are collected in common tables.

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. The closest connection is found by looking at the number of established enterprises and the number of surviving enterprises, where enterprises are the unit of measurement.

In addition, there are some definitional differences:

• Compared to the enterprise demography (version "registered enterprises"), reactivated enterprises are omitted from the establishment statistics, since these are not "real" new establishments. 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. Furthermore, certain less common legal forms are omitted, and only enterprises with one or more defined founders are included.
• The Register of Entities in Brønnøysund (ER) includes all legal units, including those that do not conduct business activities. The establishment statistics only include business activities, and the establisher must be identifiable using the role information in the Register of Entities or the shareholder register. What is called a "legal entity" by Statistics Norway, among others, is called an "enterprise" in ER1.

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 Legal Entities (CCR) 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).

The statistics are part of the national program for official statistics, main area Establishments, enterprises and accounts, subarea Ownership and roles.

Not relevant.

2004 onwards.

The statistics cover founders (entrepreneurs) of enterprises within market-oriented activities. Founders 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.

Founders (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.

Established enterprises: The statistics include new established enterprises in the traditional sense, while enterprises established in connection with mergers, splits and other events where the underlying business changes ownership are excluded. Such new enterprises in connection with a change of ownership account for about 2-3 percent of all new enterprises in the business demography. Reactivations are also excluded. These are enterprises that have been inactive for at least 2 years and then become active again. These are considered new in the annual business demography, and account for about 15-20 percent of all registered new enterprises there.

Enterprises without a defined founder are excluded. These account for about 2 percent of all new enterprises in the business demography.

Newly registered enterprises are considered established, even if they were not active in the year of establishment - or ever were. It is debatable whether registered enterprises that never became active can be called an establishing. However, this definition provides the best basis for calculating preliminary figures, and thus the most up-to-date figures possible. Most registered enterprises become active.

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, corresponding to less than 1 percent of all established enterprises, 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).These industries account for about 4-5 percent of established enterprises.

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. In 2025, a new method change was made, ensuring that founders are counted only once - and not once per founded enterprise, as was the case until the change. This time, a major restructuring was also made to the Statbank tables, and the old tables were therefore closed and new ones were established.

See also Statistics Norway’s principles for revisions.