Employment figures presented in this section differ from those presented in the Annual Business Survey release as they are based on microdata from the Inter-Departmental Business Register, which uses a combination of business survey returns and administrative sources to populate employment estimates for every individual UK business.

If one reporting unit from an enterprise group has any form of FDI link, then this status has been given to the whole enterprise group.

The sum of constituent items in tables may not always agree exactly with the totals shown because of rounding.

We advise caution when interpreting these results. Firstly, the Annual Business Survey is a cross-sectional survey, so the results are not intended to be used as a time series. Furthermore, there were changes to FDI compilation methods in 2020 and 2021 which may also affect the results.

Trade percentages are by the type of FDI link. Summing across the row gives the total percentage for UK companies with each type of FDI link that had either imported, exported or both imported and exported; the difference from 100 gives the proportion that do not trade.