businesses per year - Source frequency: annual · Methodology · Corrections
Australia's business exits was 375k businesses per year as of January 2026. Total number of businesses that ceased trading each year, including voluntary closures, mergers, and all other forms of exit. This is distinct from insolvency — most business exits are voluntary. Fewer business exits signal a healthier environment for businesses to survive and grow. Combined with entries, net formation shows whether the business population is growing or shrinking. Data is sourced from ABS Counts of Australian Businesses, including Entries and Exits (Cat. 8165.0): Exits - Total, All Industries, financial year to 30 June. ABS rebased the counts at FY2018, so FY2004-17 come from earlier releases on the earlier basis. and updated annually.
Total number of businesses that ceased trading each year, including voluntary closures, mergers, and all other forms of exit. This is distinct from insolvency — most business exits are voluntary.
Fewer business exits signal a healthier environment for businesses to survive and grow. Combined with entries, net formation shows whether the business population is growing or shrinking.
This data is sourced programmatically from official statistical APIs and data feeds (ABS Counts of Australian Businesses, including Entries and Exits (Cat. 8165.0): Exits - Total, All Industries, financial year to 30 June. ABS rebased the counts at FY2018, so FY2004-17 come from earlier releases on the earlier basis.), updated annually. The source link above points to the human-readable publication page, which presents the same underlying data in a different format (e.g. Excel workbook, PDF release). Our pipeline fetches the machine-readable version automatically and converts it to the standardised format shown here.
See all sources and methodology on the data sources page.
