Inflation leads to strong increase in sales in the craft sector

High inflation has caused sales in the German craft sector to rise sharply in 2022. According to the Federal Statistical Office, the revenues of the approximately 570,000 companies increased significantly by 9.3 percent to 720 billion euros compared to the previous year. The main reason for this was inflation – in the same period, the consumer price index for Germany rose by 6.9 percent.

In total, around 5.4 million people were employed in the skilled trades in 2022, 0.3 percent less than in the previous year. Of these, 4.1 million people were employees subject to social insurance contributions, and the remaining 630,000 people had marginal employment in the skilled trades. This means that a total of 13 percent of all employees subject to social insurance contributions in Germany were employed in the skilled trades.

Crafts, especially construction, strongly represented

Crafts are particularly well represented in the construction industry – in 2022, a good two-thirds (67 percent) of companies belonged to the craft sector. In the German economy as a whole, craft companies accounted for 16.6 percent. Their share of the total turnover of the German economy was 7.4 percent – 1.1 percentage points less than in the previous year.

The number of employees developed differently in the individual trades. A slight increase compared to the previous year was recorded in the motor vehicle trade (plus 0.6 percent), trades for commercial needs (plus 0.4 percent) and the health sector (plus 0.2 percent). In the other sectors there was a slight decrease in the number of people employed. In the food industry this was most pronounced at minus 1.1 percent compared to the previous year.

The differences in sales development were more pronounced: strong growth was recorded by the trades for private needs (plus 15.6 percent) as well as for commercial needs (plus 11 percent) and the construction industry (plus 10.5 percent), while sales in the healthcare sector increased only comparatively slightly compared to the previous year, at plus 2.9 percent.