The productivity of small and medium-sized businesses continues to decline and down 2.3% compared to first quarter 2024 datawhen it got a drop of 3.3%. Thus, we see that the average sales volume per employee is 1.7% lower than pre-pandemic levels in 2019. This is reflected in the Cepyme indicator on the situation of SMEs, which includes data from the second quarter 2024. prepared by Diego Barceló.
The loss of productivity in the second quarter was more pronounced in medium-sized companies (-3.1%) than in small ones. (-1.9%), although it should be noted that these have recorded declines over the past 18 months. From the Spanish Confederation of Small and Medium Enterprises (Cepyme) they confirm that the deterioration in productivity hinders the investment capacity of SMEs. In this way, low productivity is postulated as one of the main problems directly affecting business profitability.
Labor costs increase by 4.5%
Concerning costs, in the second quarter of 2024, they are increasing, standing at 22%, above those recorded in 2019, and with an upward trend for the next three months of the year. From Cepyme, they explain that This is due to the increase in labor costs, which increased by 4.5% in the second quarter. compared to the first (4.2%), due to the 3.9% increase in the average salary. Likewise, the increase in labor costs hurt small businesses (4.7%) more than medium-sized businesses (3.9%), as they faced structural regulations and did not not taken into account which have lower productivity.
Regarding employment data relating to SMEs, The workforce of small and medium-sized businesses increased by 2.9% year-on-yeareven exceeding 9.3 million employees. By size, the growth of small companies was 1.9%, while that of medium-sized companies increased by 5.3% and the gap between them is growing and widening.
There are fewer SMEs than in 2019
The number of SMEs increased by 4.9%, of which 0.4% corresponded to small businesses and 4.5% to medium-sized businesses. Despite this, the number of SMEs remains lower than the data recorded before the pandemic, with 5,100 fewer small businesses, although medium-sized businesses added 2,700 more. However, the data offered by Cepyme reflects that In 2024, there are 2,400 fewer SMEs than in 2019.
