Informations Rapides · 18 February 2026 · n° 37

Business births stabilised in January 2026 Enterprise births - January 2026

In January 2026, the total number of business births, all types of enterprises combined and in seasonally and working-day adjusted data, stabilised (+0.1% after +4.1% in December 2025). Business births of companies continued to increase, although at a slower pace than in the previous month (+1.0% after +5.8%), as did registrations of micro-entrepreneurs (+0.8% after +1.8%), while conventional sole proprietorships declined following a sharp temporary increase (-6.4% after +16.3%). In raw data, the total number of enterprises created over the last twelve months (February 2025 to January 2026) rose by 5.9% compared with the same period a year earlier (February 2024 to January 2025).

In January 2026, in seasonally and working-day adjusted data, business births rebounded in construction (+6.2% after -1.3%). They accelerated in information and communication (+6.0% after +0.6%) and in industry (+5.2% after +1.8%). By contrast, they fell back in business support activities (-1.8% after +6.9%) and in education, human health and social work activities (-4.6% after +6.3%).

In raw data, the cumulative number of enterprises created from November 2025 to January 2026 increased by 8.7% compared with the same period a year earlier. Registrations of micro-entrepreneurs rose (+9.7%), as did company creations (+8.3%), and conventional sole proprietorships increased more moderately (+3.1%).

Over this period, the sector contributing the most to the increase was business support activities (+12,700 creations compared with the same period a year earlier, i.e. a contribution* of +4.5 percentage points). Within this sector, creations increased particularly in “activities of head offices” (+2,800 creations compared with the same period a year earlier). The other major contributors were information and communication (+4,900 creations, i.e. +1.7 points) and trade, including the repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles (+4,000 creations, i.e. +1.4 points). The rise in business support activities is partly explained by a change in the classification rules for activity codes, as this sector now includes units previously recorded under financial and insurance activities; this change aims to limit initial misclassification errors in holding companies observed at the time of business creation, which were often corrected at a later stage. echoing this, financial and insurance activities was the main contributor to the decline in business births compared with the same period a year earlier (-1,000 creations, i.e. a contribution of -0.4 percentage points).

In raw data, the total number of business births over the last twelve months (February 2025 to January 2026) increased by 5.9% year on year. Company creations rose (+7.0%), as did registrations of micro-entrepreneurs (+6.7%), while conventional sole proprietorships declined (-2.6%).

For December 2025, the monthly change in the total number of business births (all types of enterprises combined) has been revised upward by 0.2 percentage points, due to the revision of the raw data and the updating of the seasonal adjustment (SA) and working-day adjustment (WDA) coefficients: it now stands at +4.1%, compared with +3.9% in the previous publication.