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The value that small business adds to Australia’s economy can be calculated by its contribution to Australian Gross Domestic Product (GDP). 

GDP measures the total value of final goods and services produced in the economy.

Table 1: Industry value ($millions) added by business size

^{Source: ABS Australian Industry, Table 5, May 2024 and ASBFEO calculations, private sector industry. The ABS publish this data for selected industries, which excludes financial and insurance services. Data are in $millions. Totals may not sum due to rounding.} 

Small business (employing less than 20 people) added nearly $590 billion of value in 2022-23. This was one third of Australia’s total GDP, as shown in Table 1.

Chart 1: Industry value ($billions) added by business size

^{Source: ABS Australian Industry, Table 5, May 2024 and ASBFEO calculations, private sector industry. The ABS publish this data for selected industries, which excludes financial and insurance services.  Data are in $billions.}

As shown in Chart 1, the contribution of economic value compared by business size has not changed much over the past three years.

Table 2: Small business share of the total value added ($millions) by industry in 2022-23

^{Source: ABS Australian Industry, Table 5, May 2024 and ASBFEO calculations, private sector industry. The ABS publish this data for selected industries, which excludes financial and insurance services. Small businesses are those with 0-19 employees, medium businesses are those with 20-199 employees and large businesses are those with 200+ employees. Data are in $millions. Totals may not sum due to rounding.}

You can see in Table 2 that as well as adding a significant contribution to total value, small business adds more value than other business size in the following sectors:

• Agriculture, forestry and fishing (79% of total value added)
• Rental, hiring and real estate services (74% of total value added)
• Other services (59% of total value added)
• Construction (53% of total value added).

Table 2 also shows that the largest contributions in dollar terms by small business to GDP are in the following industries:

• Construction ($86,732 million)
• Rental, hiring and real estate services ($75,371 million)
• Professional, scientific and technical services ($75,004 million). 

When evaluating according to value added in dollar terms, Australia’s largest industry is mining. Interestingly, you can see that in Table 2 small businesses contributed only 14% of all value added in the mining sector, compared to 73% from large businesses.

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