Market pulse · as of August 2026

What's happening in the trade market right now?

Five observations from the current GISA snapshot — distilled automatically from data, no editorial team, no opinion. Recomputed on the first of every month.

Free · no signup · Data snapshot August 2026 · updated monthly · CC-BY 4.0

This page is updated automatically as soon as GISA publishes a new monthly snapshot (1st of the month). The figures below refer to Vienna (AT13). Trend percentages use the post-break baseline (May 2025) — without the methodology change the signal would be distorted by structural noise. How these metrics are calculated and what limitations they have is in the methodology documentation.

⇗ Growth

The three fastest-growing trades in Vienna

  1. 1

    Nail Studio

    +15.5 % since May 2025 (post-break), currently 1,189 businesses in Vienna. Market character: growing volatile.

  2. 2

    Advertising Agency

    +10.5 % since May 2025 (post-break), currently 7,391 businesses in Vienna. Market character: growing volatile.

  3. 3

    Life & Social Coaching

    +10.2 % since May 2025 (post-break), currently 3,629 businesses in Vienna. Market character: growing volatile.

⇘ Decline

The three trades with the strongest stock decline

  1. 1

    Master Builder

    -4.0 % since May 2025 (post-break baseline). The detailed trajectory is easier to read on the trade page. Currently 1,393 businesses in Vienna.

  2. 2

    Massage

    -2.1 % since May 2025 (post-break baseline). The detailed trajectory is easier to read on the trade page. Currently 1,762 businesses in Vienna.

  3. 3

    Carpenter

    -1.4 % since May 2025 (post-break baseline). The detailed trajectory is easier to read on the trade page. Currently 548 businesses in Vienna.

⇄ Movement

The three trades with the highest market movement

A high churn index means: many registrations and deregistrations, the market is active. That can mean entry chances (seats become available) or structural instability — the individual trade page puts it in the right context.

  1. 1

    Master Builder

    129 % churn index, 1,393 active businesses in Vienna. Pattern: shrinking volatile.

  2. 2

    Roofer

    126 % churn index, 85 active businesses in Vienna. Pattern: moving market.

  3. 3

    IT Services

    119 % churn index, 16,613 active businesses in Vienna. Pattern: growing volatile.

— Stability

The three most stable trades

Low churn + small delta: established, quiet markets. Entry is doable, but market growth is not the basis — specialisation and differentiation matter more.

  1. 1

    Restaurant / Cafe / Bar

    Churn index 30 %, post-break delta +0.7 %. Currently 7,675 Vienna businesses.

  2. 2

    Baker

    Churn index 42 %, post-break delta +1.3 %. Currently 157 Vienna businesses.

  3. 3

    Hairdresser

    Churn index 50 %, post-break delta +3.1 %. Currently 2,086 Vienna businesses.

Volume

The three highest-volume Vienna trades

  1. 1

    IT Services

    16,613 active businesses in Vienna (37.2 % of all Austrian IT Services businesses are in Vienna).

  2. 2

    Business Consulting

    10,721 active businesses in Vienna (32.0 % of all Austrian Business Consulting businesses are in Vienna).

  3. 3

    Restaurant / Cafe / Bar

    7,675 active businesses in Vienna (13.6 % of all Austrian Restaurant / Cafe / Bar businesses are in Vienna).

Frequent questions about market insights

How often is this page updated?
Monthly, automatically. GISA publishes the previous month's snapshot in the first week of each month. We re-parse the CSV, compute growth/decline/churn/stability/volume for 20 trades in Vienna (NUTS2 AT13), and push the result as a build to Cloudflare Pages. There is no manual editing — the ranking emerges deterministically from the numbers.
Why only Vienna — no state-level insights?
As a single region Vienna has the highest business density and the fastest market movements. Monthly trends are most meaningful there. For the states, every trade page (e.g. /check/friseur/) has a 9-state table with density and trend — and for the detailed view of individual states the sub-pages such as /check/friseur/steiermark/.
What is the "post-break baseline" and why do you use it?
GISA changed its publication methodology in May 2025: from annual reporting to a monthly snapshot. Before and after that date the figures are not directly comparable — the jump would distort any naive 16-month trend. The post-break baseline takes May 2025 as the zero point and measures only the 12 months after it. That way the market movement is clean, without the methodology break as a spurious signal.
What does "churn index" mean concretely?
The churn index measures how much moves in a market — regardless of whether the total stock grows or shrinks. Formula: the sum of all monthly additions and departures divided by the mean stock, in percent. 100% means: in total as many movements as businesses — a very active market. 30% means: a quiet, established market. The churn index stays meaningful at a constant stock, even if net nothing happens.
Can I retrieve the insights historically?
Not currently — we store the monthly snapshots internally (for trend calculation), but the insights page always shows the current state. If there is interest in historical insights archives (e.g. "which were the growth trades in January 2026?"), get in touch by email — we can add an /insights/archiv/YYYY-MM/ route as soon as there is demand.
What if a trade is re-categorised by GISA?
GISA uses four-digit trade codes — if the taxonomy changes, we flag it explicitly as a methodology note on the affected trade page. Insights is not corrected retroactively on such changes but continued only from the next "clean" snapshot. The /en/methodik/ page documents such changes in its change history.
Are there insights for all of Austria, not just Vienna?
The /en/insights/ page is Vienna-focused, because Vienna has the highest business volume — statistical signals are most reliable there. For an Austria-wide aggregate, /region/AT/ shows all 20 trades with state percentiles. The growth/decline logic there is qualitatively the same, but quantitatively coarser (fewer data points per region).

How this list is calculated

  • Growth/decline: the percentage change between the first GISA snapshot (March 2025) and the current one (August 2026), including the methodology jump of May 2025. The 8 months post-break (May 2025 onward) provide the clean post-break trend — you see it on every trade page as a chart.
  • Movement (churn index): the sum of the absolute monthly changes relative to the mean. 100% means: in total as many additions/departures as the mean stock size — a strongly active market.
  • Stability: trades with a flat_stable pattern (narrative hint from the churn algorithm) or a churn index below 60%.
  • Volume: the absolute number of active Vienna trade licences at the snapshot date. Location trades only (adress_art = 1), no secondary premises, none dormant.

All figures come from the official GISA dataset on data.gv.at (CC-BY 4.0, updated monthly by the BMAW). No interpretation, no forecast — only what the raw data provides.