In September 2026, four sectors took 52.7% of every company registered in Romania. The other sixteen, taken together, produced less than the top four combined. This is not a rotation. It is a triage — and 7,629 businesses left the register in the same month, more than came in.

Romania registered 6,912 new businesses in September 2026. That is 53.3% fewer than the same month in 2025, when 14,815 were registered, and it is a further 14.7% fall from August, which had 8,103.

But the headline number is not the alarming part. The shape of the collapse is.

Four sectors, more than half the register

September’s registrations were spread across the economy like this:

The four largest sectors accounted for 3,644 of the month’s 6,912 registrations, or 52.7%. Add construcții — 628 registrations — and the top five alone exceed everything else in the country combined, 4,272 against 2,640.

Check the same measure earlier in the year and the picture sharpens. In March 2026, the top four sectors together took 7,346 registrations. March was a far larger month; September’s four leaders took barely half as many registrations as March’s did, in a register a fraction of the size. The base hollowed out underneath the leaders.

Nothing surged

Not one major sector grew in September 2026 against September 2025. Transport fell 45.1%, from 2,151 to 1,181. Retail fell 52.6%, from 2,119 to 1,004. IT and communications fell 29.9%, from 1,051 to 737. Professional, scientific and technical activities fell 50.5%, from 1,458 to 722. Construction fell 53.6%, from 1,352 to 628. Manufacturing fell 68.7%, from 787 to 246. Hospitality fell 74.9%, from 854 to 214. Entertainment and culture fell 74.6%, from 682 to 173.

Exactly one sector rose: agriculture, forestry and fishing, from 169 to 218, a gain of 29% — from a base so small it represents 3.2% of the national total. That is not a growth story; it is a rounding effect in a shrinking field.

So the concentration is not the result of strong sectors pulling ahead. It is the result of the rest of the sector base thinning out faster than the leaders. The pack did not rotate. It shrank.

Where the survivorship effect shows up

Two sectors are behaving differently from the rest, and both tell the same story from opposite ends.

IT and communications fell the least of any substantial sector — 29.9% — and rose from sixth place in March to third in September. In a month when construction dropped 53.6%, this is the closest thing to resilience Romania has. It is also worth noting that IT’s share did not rise because IT grew; it rose because everything around it shrank faster. A sector that is merely declining less than its neighbours now looks like an anchor.

Hospitality fell 74.9%, from 854 to 214, and entertainment and culture fell 74.6%, from 682 to 173. These are the labour-intensive, low-capital, seasonal-adjacent sectors — precisely the ones that absorb workers when formal employment tightens, and precisely the ones that vanish first when household demand contracts.

The exits confirm it

September’s registrations were 6,912. September’s business exits reached 7,629 — split into 845 suspensions, 2,875 dissolutions and 3,909 deregistrations. Net growth was minus 717, and the month’s churn rate hit 110.4%.

This is the tenth consecutive month of net-negative growth, a run dating to December 2025 that has now cumulatively destroyed 17,473 net businesses. September is not the worst month in that streak — December 2025, at minus 4,292, was — but it is the third mildest of ten, which is precisely what makes it worrying. The bleeding is no longer acute. It is becoming routine.

The exits themselves fell sharply year-on-year: dissolutions down 46.2%, deregistrations down 35.1%. That sounds like good news until you put the two figures side by side. Registrations fell 53.3% while exits fell 35–46%. Entries collapsed faster than exits. The register is not healing; it is simply moving less in both directions, which is what a stalled economy looks like from the inside.

And it is not a Bucharest story

The concentration is national, and the geographic spread suggests a general withdrawal rather than a regional anomaly. Bucharest registered 1,779 businesses in September — 25.7% of the national total — but with a churn rate of just 77.5%, the lowest of any major county.

The counties with the worst churn are the ones outside the capital’s orbit. Constanța ran a churn rate of 132.9%, Bihor 133.0%, Sibiu 134.3% and Cluj 119.4%. Cluj — routinely described as Romania’s second economic pole — saw 394 exits against 330 registrations in a single month.

The smallest counties are collapsing outright. Covasna registered 21 businesses, down 75.6% year-on-year. Tulcea fell 70.2%, Mehedinți 62.5%, Harghita 59.5%, Gorj 58.7%, Vrancea 56.0%. In these places the top four national sectors are not concentrated. They are absent.

The verdict

The concentration in September’s data is real, measurable and severe: the top four sectors took 52.7% of a shrinking national register, and the remaining sixteen sectors produced less than those four combined.

But it is not a story about winners. It is a story about a base that is failing before the leaders do. The four sectors at the top are top only because the ladder beneath them has been removed. Romania’s business register is still producing fewer companies every month than it is destroying, a tenth straight month of net loss, and the seasonal defence is not available: September is ranked ninth of twelve calendar months by historical average, an ordinary month. This is an extraordinary fall in an unremarkable month.

The 12-month moving average now stands at 11,968, a drop of 659 from the prior reading of 12,627. That average sits 5,056 above where September actually landed. The register is running at 58% of its own trailing average. Four sectors are what is left standing on it.