Sectors Of The Economy : Germany

Industry

The mainstay of the German economy is industry. In 1996 the approximately 47,000 industrial enterprises in Germany employed close to 6.5 million people. However, industry’s importance has declined considerably in recent years as a result of structural change; its share of the gross value added by all economic sectors fell from 51.7 percent in 1970 (old federal states) to 33.4 percent in 1996 (Germany as a whole). In the same period the public and private service sectors increased their share considerably. In the year 1996 private services accounted for 37.5 percent of the gross value added, commerce and transport 1 3.8 percent. Rapidly expanding branches like information and communications technologies or fields such as the aerospace industry (which is itself suffering from a considerable drop in employment) have failed to compensate for the decline of such traditional branches as textiles and steel.

Only about 1.7 percent of industrial enterprises are large companies with more than 1,000 employees; nearly three quarters are firms with fewer than 100 on the payroll. Thus the great majority of industrial enterprises in Germany are of small or medium size. However, about 32 percent (2.2 million) of the total work force in the industrial sector are employed by firms with more than 1,000 employees. Siemens alone, for instance, employs 373,000. The relatively small number of big companies account for just under 40 percent of industry’s total turnover.