Annual report on European SMEs 2014/2015, SMEs start hiring again : final report : November 2015

This report provides an overview of the past and forecasted performance of SMEs from 2008 to 2016, and reviews in greater detail the contribution of SMEs to employment creation. SMEs accounted for 71.4% of the increase in employment in 2014 in the non-financial business sector, which includes all sectors of the economy except for 'financial services', 'government services', 'education', 'health', 'arts and culture', 'agriculture, forestry and fishing'. SMEs are a highly diverse population of enterprises, and are present in every nook and cranny of the economy, with activities ranging from the production of artisan food to the production of high tech space exploration equipment, from retail services to the provision of highly specialised professional services, from focusing primarily on serving domestic customers to focusing mainly on the export markets. In short, SMEs are ubiquitous, and in 2014 accounted for 99.8% of all enterprises in the non-financial business sector in the EU28. For every km2 of land surface the EU has an average of 5 SMEs. Moreover, in 2014 SMEs employed almost 90 million people - 67% of total employment, and generated 58% of the sector's value added.