The sample of South African firms was designed as a stratified random sample.
Over 800 firms were surveyed between January and December 2004. About 75 percent (603) of the sample were in the manufacturing sector, 14 percent in the construction industry, and the remaining 11 percent in wholesale and retail trade. Within these broad sectors, firms were randomly selected from lists of firms registered with the South Africa Department of Trade and Industry (only formal registered enterprises are included in the sample). Although the samples should be broadly representative of formal firms within each sector, they are not representative of the entire economy.
The sample included firms from major metropolitan areas in Gauteng (about 63 percent of the sample), Western Cape (23 percent), KwaZulu-Natal (9 percent), and Eastern Cape (5 percent). The sample was mainly composed of small (10-49 employees), medium (50-99 employees), and large (100-499 employees) enterprises, although about 14 percent of the sample were very large (over 500 employees). There were few microenterprises (fewer than 10 employees) in the sample, especially in the manufacturing sector.
Most firms were owned either by corporations or by Caucasian or European individuals and families. Only 5 percent of firms were owned by African or colored individuals or families. The small number of African-owned firms, however, appears to reflect the distribution of formal firms. Previous studies have also found relatively few African-owned firms in these size classes. For example, in a survey of enterprises in Johannesburg in 1999, 97 percent of informal microenterprises were black-owned, but only 7 percent of formal micro, small, and medium enterprises were. This pattern appears to have persisted through 2004.
