Businesses in Scotland: 2024

National Performance Framework – National Indicators

The National Performance Framework includes an indicator on the 'Number of Businesses'. This measures the total number of registered private sector businesses operating in Scotland per 10,000 adults. This is the business stock rate. The business stock rate as at March 2024 was 379 businesses per 10,000 adults. This is up from a rate of 377 as at March 2023.

Note that the business stock rate for 2024 uses the latest business counts as at March 2024. But it uses the 2023 mid-year population estimates, and is therefore subject to revision when the 2024 mid-year population estimates are available.

The National Performance Framework includes an indicator on 'High Growth Businesses'. This measures high growth businesses as a share of all registered businesses operating in Scotland. A high growth business is defined as a business with 10+ employees in the base year (x-3). It must also exhibit an average of 20% annual growth in turnover over three years.

The number of high growth businesses increased by 790 from 1,895 as at March 2023 to 2,685 as at March 2024. This resulted in an increase in the high growth business share from 1.1% as at March 2023 to 1.5% as at March 2024. Note that there are lags associated with the turnover data used to measure high growth. Although the source of the 2024 data point is an extract of the Inter-Departmental Business Register (IDBR) as at March 2024, the underlying business turnover data will largely be from 2022. And therefore, the increase in high growth businesses, between 2023 and 2024, is reflecting the rise in business turnover between 2021 and 2022. For some businesses, turnover in 2021 would still have been particularly low due to the COVID-19 restrictions that impacted trading conditions. Also high inflation in 2022 would have increased turnover in that year.