Canadian Business Counts, with employees, December 2024
Semi-annual census snapshot of active Canadian business establishments with payroll employees from the Statistics Canada Business Register, categorized by employment size ranges (micro, small, medium, large), NAICS industry sectors, and provinces/territories.
About this dataset
- Employment size ranges: 9 categories (Total, 1 to 4, 5 to 9, 10 to 19, 20 to 49, 50 to 99, 100 to 199, 200 to 499, 500+ employees)
- North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) 2022: Sector, Subsector, and Industry Group
- Geography: Canada, 10 provinces, 3 territories
- Excludes businesses without employees (sole proprietors, self-employed contractors without CRA payroll accounts — covered in Table 33-10-0765-01)
- Not a longitudinal panel or time series — StatCan explicitly advises against time-series comparisons due to Business Register maintenance shifts
- Does not measure total employee headcount or payroll dollar volume
Measurement notes
- Statistical Location vs Legal Enterprise: Business counts are compiled at the statistical location level. A corporate enterprise with a headquarters and 10 branch plants or retail outlets is counted 11 times.
- Small Business Definition: In Canadian federal statistical practice (ISED and StatCan), businesses with 1 to 99 employees are defined as small businesses, 100 to 499 as medium-sized, and 500+ as large enterprises.
- Administrative Source: Maintained from Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) tax files and Business Register survey profiling.
| Column | Type | Non-null % | Unique Values | Mean | Min | Max |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| REF_DATE | object | 100.0% | 1 | — | — | — |
| GEO | object | 100.0% | 14 | — | — | — |
| DGUID | object | 100.0% | 14 | — | — | — |
| Employment size | object | 100.0% | 9 | — | — | — |
| North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) | object | 100.0% | 1363 | — | — | — |
| UOM | object | 100.0% | 1 | — | — | — |
| UOM_ID | int64 | 100.0% | 1 | 223.0 | 223 | 223 |
| SCALAR_FACTOR | object | 100.0% | 1 | — | — | — |
| SCALAR_ID | int64 | 100.0% | 1 | 0.0 | 0 | 0 |
| VECTOR | object | 100.0% | 85890 | — | — | — |
| COORDINATE | object | 100.0% | 85890 | — | — | — |
| VALUE | int64 | 100.0% | 3165 | 361.0 | 1 | 1,358,077 |
| STATUS | float64 | 0.0% | 0 | — | — | — |
| SYMBOL | float64 | 0.0% | 0 | — | — | — |
| TERMINATED | float64 | 0.0% | 0 | — | — | — |
| DECIMALS | int64 | 100.0% | 1 | 0.0 | 0 | 0 |
| Geography | 1 to 4 employees | 5 to 9 employees | 10 to 19 employees | 20 to 49 employees | 50 to 99 employees | 100 to 199 employees | 200 to 499 employees | 500 plus employees |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Canada | ||||||||
| Newfoundland and Labrador | ||||||||
| Prince Edward Island | ||||||||
| Nova Scotia | ||||||||
| New Brunswick | ||||||||
| Quebec | ||||||||
| Ontario | ||||||||
| Manitoba | ||||||||
| Saskatchewan | ||||||||
| Alberta | ||||||||
| British Columbia | ||||||||
| Yukon | ||||||||
| Northwest Territories | ||||||||
| Nunavut |
Observations
Establishment vs. Enterprise Counts in the Business Register
Table 33-10-0764-01 measures statistical locations and establishments with active Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) payroll deduction accounts, rather than consolidated ultimate corporate entities. Multi-establishment enterprises (e.g. chartered banks, national retail chains, freight logistics firms) are counted separately at each operating location. This provides a granular view of local economic operational capacity across Canada's provinces and territories.
The Structural SME Pyramid and Trade Diversification Readiness
Canada's employer business landscape exhibits an extreme structural skew: 97.9% of all establishments have fewer than 100 employees, and 56.4% have fewer than 5 employees. Only 3,488 establishments in Canada employ 500 or more workers. Because cross-border trade requires significant fixed overhead for regulatory compliance, export logistics, and tariff navigation, international merchandise export participation is heavily concentrated among the top 0.3% of enterprises.
Notes
Canada hosted 1,358,077 active employer business establishments in December 2024, of which 97.9% were small businesses with fewer than 100 employees and 56.4% were micro-enterprises with 1–4 workers.
Validation Checks
External: 1,358,077 (Statistics Canada Official Release (Table 33-10-0764-01 / DOI 10.25318/3310076401-eng, 2025-02-14))
Exact match: table reports exactly 1,358,077 employer business locations in Canada for the December 2024 reference period.
External: 98.2% of employer businesses are small (<100 employees) (Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED) Key Small Business Statistics 2025)
Close alignment (97.9% establishment locations vs 98.2% enterprise legal entities in ISED SME reporting).
External: 59.1% of employer businesses have 1 to 4 employees (Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED) Key Small Business Statistics 2025)
Close alignment: multi-establishment retail/services operations have slightly higher average establishment size, causing the location share (56.4%) to be slightly lower than the enterprise share (59.1%).
External: 3,488 establishments with 500+ employees (Statistics Canada Business Register Census Profile, December 2024)
Exact match: demonstrates extreme structural skew of Canadian firm distribution.