The digital industry in Germany has grown at an above-average rate in recent years. This is shown by a current evaluation. “Over the entire observation period from 2009 to 2022, the number of people employed in the ICT industry increased by around 59 percent – significantly more than in all comparable sectors,” said Thomas Niebel, an expert at the Mannheim research institute ZEW. The industry includes information technology and telecommunications companies. Different areas of the commercial economy were compared.
In 2022 alone, the number of people employed in the information and communications technology industry rose by around six percent to almost 1.5 million employees and self-employed people subject to social security contributions. The industry is also proving to be particularly strong in terms of start-ups. On average over the past three years, the rate of newly founded companies relative to the total number was 7.3 percent. With the exception of a pandemic-related setback in 2020, the number of companies grew continuously between 2009 and 2022.
Overall, the number of companies in this area increased by almost 23 percent to around 99,000 during this period. This corresponds to a share of 3.9 percent of the commercial economy in Germany. In 2022, sales in the ICT industry, including price increases, rose by twelve percent compared to the previous year to a high of almost 315 billion euros.