Competition expresses itself as rivalrous behaviour between firms to win and retain customers, and takes many forms – rivalry in terms of price, service, innovation, quality, and other factors (ACCC, 2025).

There is no single indicator that tells us how competitive an economy or industry is. Competition is best measured by looking at a range of indicators together (OECD, 2021).

Our Competition Pulse brings together a range of key competition indicators, using the latest and best data and techniques to show how competition is changing in Australia and within Australian industries.

Greater competition brings many benefits:

• Prices: when customers can switch easily, firms lower prices to attract customers.
• Quality: firms improve quality to attract and keep customers.
• Choice: new and growing firms add more products, service models and places to work.
• Innovation: to win customers, firms experiment and invest in better products and processes.

• Industry concentration: what percentage of sales are captured by the four largest firms in that industry.
• Firm persistence: how frequently the top four firms in an industry turn over from year to year, measured as the percentage of the top four largest firms in an industry in a given year that are still in the top four three years later.
• Firm entry rate: the percentage of employing firms within an industry that have entered in a given year.
• Firm exit rate: the percentage of employing firms within an industry that have exited in a given year.
• Labour mobility: the percentage of workers in an industry that change jobs in a given year, either with an existing employer or at a new employer in any industry.
• Profit share: the share of the value created by an industry that remains as operating surplus for firms, rather than being paid out as wages or net production taxes (calculated as Gross Operating Surplus divided by Gross Value Added).