Press release No. 130 of 16 March 2021
WIESBADEN – The second coronavirus wave and the second hard lockdown have stopped the recovery of the German economy at the end of 2020. Based on the official short-term indicators currently available, it is however not expected for the first quarter of 2021 to see a development similar to the massive slump in economic activity in the second quarter of 2020. This is mainly due to the solid start of production-related sectors into the new year. Based on provisional results, the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) reports that production in industry in January 2021 fell a real, seasonally and calendar adjusted 2.5% on December 2020 and thus was 4.2% below the level before the coronavirus crisis in February 2020. The high levels of new orders in manufacturing and of demand for German exports of goods show, however, that the second lockdown hit the production-related sectors much less hard than the first one in spring 2020.
