Importance Of Crafts And Trades In The Industrial Society : Germany

Industry needs the small craft industries because they are flexible suppliers of products and parts. In addition, the crafts and trades serve as the link between industry and the consumer, since high-quality industrial products have to be serviced and repaired. But craftsmen are also producers themselves. Bakers, confectioners and slaughterers provide a wide range of foodstuffs. Houses in Germany are still mostly constructed and finished by hand by bricklayers, carpenters, plumbers and painters. The crafts and trades are of special importance to the German economy for two other reasons. One is that they offer scope for a large number of self-employed people and are thus a kind of school for young entrepreneurs. The other is that they are among the most important sources of training. It is here that about 39 percent of all apprentices in the Federal Republic of Germany learn their trade.

The crafts and trades are playing a very important role in the restructuring of the economy in the new federal states, where they are providing the impetus for growth. Even in the days of GDR central planning, some 82,000 small private craft firms were able to exist alongside the roughly 2,700 production cooperatives. From the time of unification to the end of 1996, the number of small craft businesses and similar firms in the new federal states increased to about 155,800 with a total work force of just under 1.3 million. In terms of the size of the work force, the most important trade group is that of the bricklayers, concrete and reinforced concrete workers, and skilled road construction workers. The wide range of craft products is impressively displayed at the International Light Industries and Handicrafts Fair held every spring in Munich.