The number of new businesses founded in Germany fell by a total of 2.7 million in 2016. According to the IfM Bonn, the contrasting trend between start-ups in the commercial sector and freelance start-ups has continued.
While around 282,400 people started a commercial business last year (-5.4% compared to 2015: 298,500), the number of new self-employed freelancers rose by 5,500 to 88,800 (+6.6% compared to 2015: 83,300). The number of business closures in the commercial sector continued to decline by 5.2% to around 310,900.
“When it comes to start-ups in the commercial sector, we see that the generally good labor market situation continues to have an impact: Qualified workers are clearly still finding sufficiently attractive employment opportunities,”
explained Dr. Rosemarie Kay, Deputy Managing Director of the IfM Bonn.
"A positive development for the German economy is that in 2016, one in three commercial start-ups was the establishment of a head office. Such start-ups often create new jobs. Overall, the number of head office start-ups increased by 3.9% to 89,800 last year."
New forms of self-employment have developed
She sees tertiarisation and the greater importance of knowledge processing and information services as reasons for the steady increase in start-ups in the liberal professions:
“The outsourcing trend of recent decades has also left visible traces: combined with the rapid development in the field of communication technologies, this has led to new markets – and thus to new forms of self-employment,”
continues Dr. Rosemarie Kay.
The propensity to start a business varies regionally. Measured as the number of new businesses per 10,000 employed persons (start-up intensity), it shows that this has declined in all other German states, with the exception of North Rhine-Westphalia and Thuringia.
For the current year, the scientists of the IfM Bonnthat the opposite trend in the start-up activity continues.
