Introduction

Analysing the business environment is essential for evidence-based policymaking, ensuring that interventions are targeted, efficient, and effective. Firm-level data provides a vital source of information on labour and skills demand, helping governments craft policies that drive sustainable economic development. This report explores the role of three primary data sources: administrative records, household surveys, and enterprise surveys. Integrating these sources allows policymakers to build a comprehensive, accurate, and policy-relevant understanding of economic and labour market dynamics.

Administrative data

Administrative data refers to information collected by government agencies for non-statistical purposes, such as taxation or business registration. Key sources include business registers, tax records, and social security databases. These sources offer broad coverage over time and are cost-effective as they repurpose existing data. However, they typically lack qualitative depth and are often limited to the formal sector, potentially excluding informal firms. In Brazil, the SPED (Sistema Público de Escrituração Digital) provides reliable financial and operational data, while New Zealand uses tax and business registers to publish quarterly employment data.

Household surveys

Unlike enterprise surveys that focus on registered businesses, household surveys capture micro and home-based activities, including self-employment and informal businesses. Labour Force Surveys (LFS) are widely used to collect data on employment, unemployment, and job conditions. These surveys can serve as a baseline for identifies self-employed individuals for follow-up enterprise studies. For example, Colombia’s EMICRON uses a two-step methodology to integrate household and enterprise surveys, ensuring that home-based businesses are included in economic analysis.

Enterprise surveys

Enterprise surveys collect detailed sector-specific information directly from businesses, covering performance, investment, innovation, and workplace practices. While they offer unique qualitative insights into management practices and constraints, they have limitations, such as self-reporting bias and higher costs. To overcome these, enterprise surveys are increasingly combined with household surveys and administrative data. Such integration enhances the labour-market dimension of firm performance and provides a more structural overview of the economy.

Relevant research areas

Integrating these data sources enables research in critical areas such as business demography, productivity, and informality. Administrative data is particularly effective for tracking firm entry, survival, and exit over time. Enterprise surveys help identify productivity gaps between industries and business size groups. They also allow for the analysis of gross job flows, showing how business cycles translate into employment expansion and contraction. Furthermore, these sources provide insights into skills mismatches, where workers’ qualifications do not align with employer demand.

Review of the literature based on surveys and administrative data

Academic studies have used these data sources to link enterprise characteristics to outcomes like productivity and growth. Research in Ghana demonstrated that household characteristics, such as education and income, significantly influence the success of microenterprises. Longitudinal firm data from the United States revealed that young firms are disproportionately responsible for job creation, despite higher mortality rates. Additionally, literature on global value chains (GVCs) indicates that firms integrated into international markets are more resilient to economic shocks due to exposure to diversified markets and technologies.

Two-step small-business survey linked to household surveys: A case study using Colombia’s Encuesta de Micronegocios (EMICRON)

The EMICRON survey provides critical insights into microenterprises in Colombia, where 77 per cent of enterprises are informal and most are one-person operations. Data reveals that more than 90 per cent of workers in these micro-businesses work informally, lacking contributions to health insurance and pensions. The COVID-19 pandemic caused significant turnover losses, with 60 per cent of microenterprises losing an average of at least 20 per cent in sales compared to the previous year. However, agricultural micro-businesses were more resilient, with 43 per cent reporting sales equal to or higher than those in 2019.

Structural surveys for national accounting purposes: Ecuador’s Encuesta Estructural Empresarial (ENESEM)

The ENESEM is representative of formal firms in Ecuador, where SMEs make up nearly 70 per cent of the population. The mining sector exhibited the highest levels of value-added, averaging US$96.4 million, with productivity reaching US$233,500 per worker. During the pandemic, microenterprises faced the largest losses, with sales falling by approximately 18 per cent between 2019 and 2020. The analysis identifies “Lazarus” firms that fell below workforce thresholds in 2020 but recovered by 2021. Productivity and investment in worker benefits were significant predictors of this recovery.

Administrative employer-employee data: Brazil’s Relação Anual de Informações Sociais (RAIS)

RAIS provides a longitudinal view of Brazil’s formal sector by linking employer and employee records. Firm mortality rates in the formal sector rose to 11.37 per cent in 2019 but eased to 9.37 per cent by 2021. The rate of “Lazarus” revival increased from 13.05 per cent in 2018–20 to 17.98 per cent in the 2019–21 period. The rehiring rate between 2020 and 2021 was three times higher than during the 2015–16 recession. Older firms and those in the industrial sector were more likely to expand their workforce during the recovery period.

Conclusions

Accurate and reliable data are essential for understanding labour markets and business dynamics. A mixed-method approach that integrates enterprise surveys, household surveys, and administrative data is critical for producing comprehensive economic analysis. While administrative data is suitable for assessing macroeconomic trends, household surveys are more effective for capturing informal microenterprises. Future efforts should focus on expanding the use of firm-level data and strengthening the linkages between existing data sources to enable more evidence-based policies that promote sustainable growth and labour market stability.