Industry overview
The Human health and social work activities sector across EU27 average comprises approximately 2,342,527 enterprises employing about 11,241,695 people and generating €910.5 bn in net turnover in 2022. The average enterprise size is 6 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 17.9% of revenue in 2022, the sector reports €162.7 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
Personnel costs are the dominant cost driver in Human health and social work activities, absorbing 47.0% of revenue. Cost of revenue accounts for 38.5% and energy purchases –. The labour-intensive nature of activities in this sector means that productivity gains and wage discipline have an outsized effect on margin. Note that small percentage shifts in labour cost ratios translate quickly into operating result.
Productivity & human capital
Each employee in the Human health and social work activities sector generates approximately €68,000 of net turnover against a labour cost of €25,000, yielding a productivity-to-cost ratio of 2.7. Value added per employee stands at €52,000 This is a headline figure to compare against individual firm performance when judging whether headcount is creating proportional value.
Trend & trajectory
Over the period 2021 to 2022 the operating margin moved from 20.6% to 17.9% (-2.7 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.