In-depth analysisBusiness and investment
A million business creations a year: real activity or a change of status?
Since 2009 the number of businesses has jumped: what do these units amount to in jobs and productivity?
Version 2026.1 · Public data frozen on 30 September 2026 · 8 catalogue series · Lire cette analyse en français
The question
In 2025, 1,165,795 businesses were created in France, according to the business register kept by the Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques (INSEE) — more than three times the 2008 level (363,394). Among them, 758,542 are registrations under the micro-entrepreneur regime, or 65% of the total.
A million creations — is that a million new activities? This page's question is the nature of these units: how much employment, how much output, how much productivity does each additional “business” cover, and has the productive fabric really thickened or merely fragmented?
What the data show
The series has a date: 2009. Creations go from 363,394 in 2008 to 599,594 in 2009 (+65.0%) with the entry into force of the auto-entrepreneur regime, later renamed micro-entrepreneur. From the first year, 315,501 registrations fall under that status — 53% of creations. Since then, after a dip in the mid-2010s, the share has climbed back: 58% in 2019, 65% in 2025.
Excluding micro-entrepreneurs, creations of “classic” businesses — companies and ordinary sole proprietorships — amount to 407,253 in 2025: +12.1% compared with all creations in 2008, when the status did not exist. The overall rise (+220.8% between 2008 and 2025) is therefore essentially that of a status, not that of companies.
Relative to the population, creations went from 5.7 per thousand inhabitants in 2008 to 16.9 in 2025. The stock of active businesses followed: 3,518,123 in 2009, 5,793,352 in 2020 (+64.7%), then — after a change in the series' scope in 2021 — 4,827,641 in 2021 and 5,615,765 in 2024.
Chart 1 of 1 · thousands per year · Period 2000-2025
Business creations and micro-entrepreneur registrations since 2000
Is the rise in creations that of a status?
Reading
- Business creations
- of which micro-entrepreneurs
What to see
- The 2009 step, then a second acceleration from 2018.
- The gap between the two curves — classic creations — grows far more slowly than the total.
What this does not mean
- A registration is not an activity: some micro-businesses declare no turnover.
Limits · Business register (INSEE), gross registrations; the regime only exists from 2009. Source · INSEE — Macroeconomic database (BDM), series 010755537 (Sirene business register) · INSEE — Macroeconomic database (BDM), series 010755410
What has changed
Two recent accelerations. In 2018, the doubling of the micro regime's turnover ceilings widens its scope: registrations go from 317,474 in 2017 to 498,730 in 2019 (+57.1% in two years). In 2020-2021, the health crisis produces the opposite of a freeze: 900,169 creations in 2020 despite lockdowns, then 1,050,520 in 2021, driven by delivery, personal services and online retail.
What has not changed is productivity: the hourly productivity index stood at 93.9 in 2009 and 101.7 in 2025 (+8.3% in sixteen years), while the number of businesses grew by more than half. More units did not mean more output per hour.
The visible relationships
What cannot be claimed
GDP per business is a ratio of two quantities with different scopes — GDP includes government and households, the business stock does not — and the stock series changed definition in 2021. It indicates a direction, not a value.
This page carries neither the turnover nor the employment of micro-businesses, nor the number of them actually active (a registration with no turnover is still a registration). The share of micro-entrepreneurs who live from their activity, of those with several jobs, of those dependent on a platform are not measured here.
Finally, the regime's effect on salaried employment — substitution or net creation — is the subject of a debate these series do not settle.
The events that shed light on the path
Where we stand today
In 2025, 1,165,795 creations including 758,542 micro-entrepreneurs (65%), a stock of 5,615,765 active businesses in 2024, hourly productivity at 101.7. The pace of creation has never been higher; output per business, on the current scope, has not risen since 2021.
What the reader can take away
The million creations is first a change of status: two thirds are micro-entrepreneurs, and classic creations have grown only modestly since 2008. The productive fabric has gained units, not size; it has atomised without gaining productivity.
What the reader can keep: the number of creations measures access to a status, not the vitality of the economy — and that is not nothing, because an accessible status has allowed hundreds of thousands of people to work. An account gives access to the full cross-reading: output per business, the link with unemployment, the atomisation of the stock, the regime's chronology.
Sources and method
Every figure on this page is read from an identified public series, or computed from it according to the stated rule. The series are those of France ÉcoScan's catalogue, checked against their producer and frozen on the date given at the top of the page.
- Business Creations — INSEE — Macroeconomic database (BDM), series 010755537 (Sirene business register) · bdm.insee.fr
- Micro-entrepreneurs — registrations — INSEE — Macroeconomic database (BDM), series 010755410 · bdm.insee.fr
- Active enterprises — Eurostat — Business demography by size class (bd_size, EBS regulation) · ec.europa.eu
- Unemployment (ILO definition) — Eurostat — Unemployment by sex and age, annual data (une_rt_a) · ec.europa.eu
- Hourly labour productivity (2015=100) — Eurostat — Labour productivity and unit labour costs (nama_10_lp_ulc) · ec.europa.eu
- Tax Burden (% GDP) — INSEE — annual national accounts, base 2020 · www.insee.fr
- Population — INSEE — population estimates · www.insee.fr
- France GDP (Bn €) — INSEE — annual national accounts, base 2020 · www.insee.fr