Industry overview
The Water supply; sewerage, waste management and remediation activities sector across EU27 average comprises approximately 81,486 enterprises employing about 1,542,012 people and generating €316.5 bn in net turnover in 2022. The average enterprise size is 19 employees per firm. This is a useful yardstick when assessing whether your own operation sits within the typical scale band of the sector.
Profitability
With a robust operating margin of 15.9% of revenue in 2022, the sector reports €50.2 bn of gross operating surplus (Eurostat's EBITDA-equivalent, before depreciation). This figure provides the headline benchmark against which an individual operator can sanity-check their own bottom line, values significantly below indicate cost or pricing pressure, those above suggest competitive advantage worth defending.
Cost structure
The Water supply; sewerage, waste management and remediation activities cost mix is reasonably balanced: cost of revenue at 66.8%, personnel at 19.4% and energy at 2.7% of turnover. Without a single dominant cost driver, margin management requires attention across the full operating envelope rather than focus on any one line.
Productivity & human capital
Each employee in the Water supply; sewerage, waste management and remediation activities sector generates approximately €199,000 of net turnover against a labour cost of €29,000, yielding a productivity-to-cost ratio of 6.9. Value added per employee stands at €72,000 This is a headline figure to compare against individual firm performance when judging whether headcount is creating proportional value.
Trend & trajectory
Over the period 2011 to 2022 the operating margin moved from 17.8% to 15.9% (-2.0 percentage points), a deteriorating trajectory that warrants attention. Sectors with stable or improving margins tend to reflect successful pass-through of input costs and disciplined capacity management; declining margins typically point to either over-supply or a structural cost squeeze that warrants strategic review.