"Where Did Small Business Owners Go After Closure?"... Ministry of SMEs and Startups to Build 'Recovery Path' Statistics

The government has begun building detailed statistics to identify the pathways through which small business owners recover after closing their businesses.

According to the government on April 17, the Ministry of SMEs and Startups has been working since February to establish new statistics to track the recovery routes of small business owners who have closed their businesses. The Small Enterprise and Market Service is in charge of the project and is currently building the basic dataset. It is reported that, as early as this month, an external research service will also be commissioned for the project.

This initiative is significant as it marks the first attempt to trace how small business owners who have closed their businesses manage to restart-whether through starting a new business or finding employment. While the Ministry of Data and Statistics and other agencies currently provide annual statistics on business closures and the survival rates of small businesses, there are virtually no official statistics showing the pathways these business owners take after closure or how they recover. To address this gap, the Ministry of SMEs and Startups and the Small Enterprise and Market Service plan to link and analyze related data to identify the recovery routes of small business owners who have closed their businesses.

The key aspect of this project is that the statistics will be built based on individuals rather than business entities. Since one person can hold multiple business registrations, tracking by individual is necessary to accurately identify their movement and recovery path. To enable this, the Small Enterprise and Market Service will receive encrypted versions of personal resident registration numbers from the Ministry of Data and Statistics and will analyze them alongside industry and sales data. It is known that a substantial portion of the relevant data has already been secured.

An official from the Small Enterprise and Market Service stated, "As this is the early stage of the project, the focus is on accurately identifying the number and movement routes of small business owners who have closed their businesses," adding, "We expect to see results in the second half of the year." It is also said that the Ministry of SMEs and Startups has shown strong resolve in planning this project.

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Once the new statistics are established, it is expected to help verify the effectiveness of the Ministry of SMEs and Startups’ ongoing support program for small business owners who have closed their businesses, called the “Hope Return Package.” This program has provided crisis management support for at-risk small business owners and, in the event of closure, has covered business liquidation costs such as store demolition expenses.

It has also offered assistance for restarting businesses and vocational training to help participants transition to wage employment, thereby supporting stable recovery. However, statistics showing the actual routes through which recipients have returned to economic activity have been lacking. Moving forward, the government will be able to identify the success rate of participants restarting businesses and their transition rate to wage employment, providing a foundation for further policy operation and improvement.

According to National Tax Service statistics, the number of individuals and corporations that filed for business closure in 2024 totaled 1,008,282. For the first time since related statistics were compiled in 1995, the number of closures exceeded 1 million. The closure rate also rose slightly to 9.04%, compared to 9.02% the previous year.

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