Top Named Thai Industries by Survival Rate 2026

Specialized medical practice activities keeps 99.97 percent of its 2,926 registered companies active, the highest survival rate of any named Thai industry with at least 500 firms on the books, as of 17 July 2026 (DBD, 2026). Other credit granting follows at 99.91 percent, then residential care for the elderly at 99.88 percent. Freight forwarding and customs agent activities, a sector with real scale at 5,701 companies, holds 99.75 percent of them active. Interior decorators, retail fuel stations, tour operators and spa and massage salons round out a top 10 where every entrant clears 99.5 percent. This ranking cross references each 5-digit code against Thailand's published TSIC classification list, so it reads as an actual industry list rather than a string of digits.

Twenty one named industries report a full 100 percent active rate, though none carry the scale of the top 10. Automobile driving schools lead this group with 265 companies, all active, followed by other information service activities at 256 and astrological and spiritualists activities at 181. Every one of these 21 codes has fewer than 500 registered companies, small enough that a single closure would break a perfect record, which is why the top 10 ranking above sets 500 as its floor. At the other end of the scale sits manufacture of other wines, where only 128 of 2,783 registered companies remain active, a survival rate of 4.6 percent. Passenger land transport by taxi keeps just 6.68 percent of its 5,227 companies active, and web portals hold on to only 5.68 percent of theirs. The gap between the top named industry and the weakest named industry of comparable scale runs past 95 percentage points.

A survival rate this high usually signals that demand is licensed, recurring or hard to replace, not that the trade carries no risk at all. Medical practices, freight forwarders and elder care homes all require capital, permits or specialist staff before a company can even register, which filters out the ventures most likely to fold within a year or two. Set that against the 4.6 percent survival rate in wine manufacturing, a category crowded with small speculative producers that registered during a craft beverage wave and mostly never turned into a lasting company. In the United States, an average of 49.2 percent of new employer establishments survived at least five years across 1994 to 2022 (BLS, 2024), a cohort measure rather than a snapshot, yet even that benchmark sits far below every industry named here. For a lender, an investor or a franchise partner choosing where to place capital, a named 5-digit ranking is a sharper tool than a section level average. It points at the exact trade to trust and the exact trade to treat with caution, not just the broad industry group it sits inside.