As a response to increasing demand, statistics on business demography, i.e. births, deaths and life expectancy of enterprises, have a legal basis at EU level with the entry into force of the recast Council and European Parliament Regulation on Structural Business Statistics. This manual describes the methodology for this data collection, covering all enterprises including self-employment. Some of these data form part of the Structural Indicators measuring the progress towards the European Union's goals set out in the Growth and Jobs Strategy. In addition, the manual includes indicators of employer enterprises and high growth enterprises. These indicators are essential for the Entrepreneurship Indicators Project, where the OECD and Eurostat are developing a framework for the regular and harmonised measurement of entrepreneurial activity.

Custodian: Eurostat, OECD