Small business insights
Small businesses1 define our identity as a place, a region and a destination. Small businesses create local jobs and provide essential goods and services, both to the community and to larger organisations. They drive regional economic development and make up the backbone of the supply chains of major projects.
1The Small Business Commissioner considers a small business to be any business that a reasonable person would consider to be small regardless of structure, turnover or number of employees (generally equivalent to <20 FTEs). The Queensland Small Business Commissioner provides services for small businesses that are based in Queensland. This is the Small Business Commissioner’s operational policy in relation to the definition of a small business.
Queensland small business data
Data1 current as of 30 June 2023
482,836
small businesses in Queensland
97.1%
of all businesses in the state are small businesses
62.1%
of small businesses are non-employing
The 482,836 small businesses in Queensland account for 19.2% of all Australian small businesses, compared to 20.49% of Australia’s population that live in the state2.
Of those:
-
62.1% of small businesses are non-employing
-
28.04% have 1-4 employees
-
9.86% have 5-19 employees
Queensland's top 10 small business industries
- Construction (17.4%)
- Professional, scientific and technical services (12.5%)
- Rental, hiring and real estate services (11.9%)
- Agriculture, forestry and fishing (8.6%)
- Health care and social assistance (7.5%)
- Transport, postal and warehousing (7.4%)
- Retail trade (5.8%)
- Other services (5.6%)
- Administrative and support services (4.5%)
- Financial and insurance services (4.2%)
1 Unless otherwise stated, all numbers are from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (2023), Counts of Australian Businesses, including Entries and Exits.
2 Calculated using Australian Bureau of Statistics (2023), Regional Population Population estimates and components by SA2 and above 2022 to 2023, accessed 21 June 2024.
Reports
The QSBC provides the following reports to help inform Queensland small businesses and raise public awareness.