Smaller businesses recorded about 65% of the turnover per person employed achieved by large businesses on average across 33 countries in the OECD’s 2026 productivity compendium, but the gap varied sharply by sector and country.
The OECD analysis compares small and medium-sized enterprises with large firms using business-sector data, generally for 2024. The average is unweighted across OECD and accession candidate countries, so each country contributes equally rather than in proportion to its economic size.
In business services, medium-sized firms often matched or exceeded large firms. Manufacturing showed a stronger relationship between size and the measured output per person.
What the comparison measures
The headline figure uses turnover, or sales, per person employed. It is not profit per employee, wages or an hourly productivity figure. Turnover includes the value of goods and services a business purchases from suppliers, which can make comparisons between different business models difficult.
The OECD uses other measures in separate parts of the study, including value added per worker. Value added subtracts purchased inputs from output. Results from those datasets should not be treated as interchangeable with the 65% turnover measure.
For the headline comparison, an SME generally has fewer than 250 people employed. The US data use a different threshold and, along with Costa Rica and Korea, refer to 2022. The OECD also notes gaps in coverage, differences in definitions and a lack of firm-size-specific price adjustments.
Size is only part of the explanation
Across the countries in the comparison, the SME-to-large-firm ratio ranged from 30% in Ireland to 98% in Switzerland. The gap widened between 2013 and 2024 in 20 of 32 countries with comparable data, according to the report.
Large firms may benefit from spreading fixed costs over more output, obtaining finance and selling across borders. Those possibilities do not establish why any particular company performs well or poorly.
Even within a size category and industry, firms differ substantially. The OECD’s separate MultiProd evidence attributes about 95% of productivity variation within an industry to differences among firms within the same size groups. That statistic uses a different firm-level dataset and productivity measure from the headline turnover comparison.
What owners should examine
A small manufacturer considering a machine purchase needs to compare the cost of equipment and training with its expected output, defects and orders. More units per employee may not increase profit if demand is insufficient or input costs rise.
Services businesses face different constraints. Specialist knowledge, the price of a contract and time spent on administration can all affect sales per worker. A higher sales figure alone cannot tell an owner whether margins or cash flow have improved.
Our earlier coverage of revenue per worker and the wage question explains why revenue, profits and employee compensation need separate measures. The OECD comparison gives businesses a starting point for examining performance, not a target that every individual firm should be expected to reach.
