Over 80% of 2019’s businesses still thriving after Covid threat

MORE than eight-in-ten businesses that were open during 2019 survived the pandemic and are still trading, according to the Central Statistics Office (CSO)

The CSO’s Frontier series on Business Signs of Life: Business Survival – which tracked business from 2019, through the pandemic until the end of last year – found that 10% of businesses risked closing and 6% appeared to be closed.

Speaking yesterday, Sorcha O’Callaghan, a statistician with the CSO, said: ‘The results show that of the enterprises with two or more persons engaged in 2019, 84% were estimated to be still in business at the end of 2021.’

The sector with the highest survival rate was ‘industry’ – which includes mining, quarrying, manufacturing, electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply as well as water supply; sewerage and waste management. This sector had an 89.8% survival rate.

This is followed by the information and communication sector at 88.4%.

The data shows that of the 1.5million people employed by businesses in 2019, 1.4 million, or 94%, were working with a business that survived the pandemic.

Just 2.2% of people were employed in a business that appeared closed by the end of 2021 and 3.5% were with businesses that were at risk of closure.

The highest proportion of enterprises that appeared closed were in the real estate activities sector at 10%.

The ‘other services activities sector’, which includes gyms and hairdressers, had the highest proportion of enterprises which showed signs of being at risk of closing at 18%.

Ms O’Callaghan said: ‘Among the 653 large enterprises in 2019, 640 (98%) were still in business at the end of 2021.

‘There were also more than nine in ten medium enterprises, at 96%, and small enterprises at 94%, which survived at the end of 2021.’

The series was created by the CSO to provide up to date information on how enterprises have survived during the Covid-19 pandemic.