Employed persons in services. By activity group

The Structural Business Statistics in the Service Sector (called the Annual Services Survey prior to the reference year 2014), is the main source of structural information for all market services. It is a sample survey performed annually by the National Statistical Institute (INE) in collaboration with the Statistical Institute of Catalonia (Idescat) in the Catalan territory. Its fundamental objective is the study of the economic characteristics of companies in the sector, such as their primary activities and employment, as well as accounting data such as expenses or income.

The statistical unit used in the research is companies whose main economic activity is to provide one of the services described in following. A company is considered to be the smallest combination of legal entities that make up an organizational unit that produces goods or services and has a certain degree of autonomy in regard to decision-making. A company may carry out its activities in one or several local units (establishments). The data published for Catalonia regarding this statistic refers to the activities developed by the company units in Catalonia, according to the Catalan Classification of Economic Activities 2009 (CCAE-2009). Until 2007, the classification used was CCAE-93.

Employees are a group of people who, by performing their job, contribute to the production of goods or services or carry out auxiliary services to a company (administration, transport, warehousing). This includes holiday staff, those on short-term or sick leave, those on strike, and those paid by the company but who work offsite. This does not include personnel with unlimited leave, personnel assigned to another company and are paid for this concept, personnel who work strictly on commission, freelance professionals bound to the company by commercial contract, exclusively financial partners or the owner's family members who do not take an active role in the company. The reference point for the employment data is 30th September of each year.

From 2009 to 2011, the "Artistic, leisure and entertainment activities" and "Other services" groups were partially studied using a rota system, meaning some of its branches were studied each year. From the year 2012 onwards, all of this group of branches will be studied again. The relationship of branches studied each year is as follows:

In 2014, companies not previously included in the Survey framework were incorporated into the "Wholesale trade and intermediaries, except motor vehicles" branch (group 467 of the CCAE-2009).

Several methodological improvements were applied to the Structural Business Statistics in 2016 as part of the Project for the integration of the structural economic surveys.

The lack of uniformity described means it would not be appropriate to calculate the year-over-year variation for these groups of activities for the mentioned years.

From 2019, the results for Spain are shown using the statistical companies unit, while for Catalonia the results continue to be shown in legal units.

You can get more information about these statistics in the methodology.