In 2024 a total of approximately 564,000 enterprises active in the German crafts sector employed around 6.0 million persons. More than 4.1 million of them were employed subject to social insurance contribution. Roughly 1.3 million were employed in marginal employment.
It should be noted that in 2024 there was a change in the methodology used to verify employment, which has led to an increase in the number of employees, particularly those in marginal employment. Rates of change in the overall figures are calculated approximately. Absolute figures are not comparable with those of the previous year.
As the Federal Statistical Office further reports, these enterprises realised a turnover of about 762 billion Euros.
The skilled crafts sector accounted for 15.9% of all companies active in the overall economy (sections B to N, P to S of the Classification of Economic Activities, 2008 edition). This is a decrease of 0.6 percentage points compared with the previous year.
Economic Significance
According to reports by the Business Register (only in German) there where about 3.5 million economically active legal units in 2024 in Germany. On average for the year, they employed about 32.7 million people subject to social security contributions and realized a turnover of around 9,821 billion Euros. Taking this into account around 15.9% of the economically active legal units were part of the crafts sector. Around 12.7% of the employment subject to social security contributions took place in the crafts sector while it realized 7.8% of the overall turnover in 2024.
The construction sector (Section F of the Classification of Economic Activities, Edition 2008) is of special relevance in the crafts sector. In 2024 about 65.2% of the roughly 388,000 legal units active in construction were organized in the chambers of crafts. They employed 78.5% of the roughly 1.9 million persons subject to social security contributions and realised 69.4% of the 414 billion Euros turnover in the construction sector.
Meanwhile 40.9% of around 210,000 active legal units in Manufacturing (Section C of the Classification of Economic Activities, Edition 2008) belonged to the crafts sector. 15.8% of the around 6.9 million persons employed subject to social security contributions in Manufacturing were employed by crafts enterprises and 7.2% of the 2,557 billion Euros in turnover were realized by them.
A characteristic feature of the crafts sector is the large number of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs). In 2024, 99.5% of all enterprises in crafts with compulsory and non-compulsory approval were SMEs. Here, 77,4% of the persons employed in the crafts sector generated 69.9% of turnover.
Additional information on this statistics and detailed results for crafts are contained in the tables of the census oft crafts (53111) in the GENESIS-Online Database.