Industry overview
The Administrative and support service activities sector across EU27 average comprises approximately 1,828,408 enterprises employing about 12,612,092 people and generating €1.1 tn in net turnover in 2022. The average enterprise size is 8 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 18.2% of revenue in 2022, the sector reports €204.5 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 Administrative and support service activities cost mix is reasonably balanced: cost of revenue at 50.6%, personnel at 33.5% and energy at – 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 Administrative and support service activities sector generates approximately €80,000 of net turnover against a labour cost of €21,000, yielding a productivity-to-cost ratio of 3.8. Value added per employee stands at €46,000 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 14.1% to 18.2% (+4.1 percentage points), an encouraging upward trajectory. 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.