Germany’s Cultural and Creative Industries Continue to Show Strong Development

In 2016 Germany’s cultural and creative industries once again experienced an increase in both revenue and the number of employees. While total revenue rose by more than 1.5 per cent to 154.4 billion euros, the number of core employees working in this sector – i.e. the total of both self-employed workers and employees subject to social insurance contributions – climbed almost three per cent to over 1.1 million. These are the findings of the 2017 monitoring report on the state of the cultural and creative industries in Germany regularly compiled by the Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW), Mannheim, and the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research (ISI) as part of the German federal government’s Cultural and Creative Industries Initiative.

Taking both the 1.1 million core employees and marginally employed individuals into account, overall employment in the German cultural and creative industries rose to a total of 1.6 million in 2016. This corresponds to an increase of 2.1 per cent compared to the previous year.

This year’s monitoring report pays special attention to the development of gross value added. Using a new calculation method, researchers were able to make far more exact calculations which can be broken down into the eleven individual sub-markets within the cultural and creative industries, something which was not previously possible.

Overall, the gross value added of the cultural and creative industries ran to a total of 98.8 billion euros, an increase of almost 4.2 per cent compared to the previous year. The sector’s macroeconomic share of gross domestic product in 2016 was 3.1 per cent, which is only slightly behind that of mechanical engineering and well ahead of the chemical industry and financial service providers.

The 2017 monitoring report compiled on behalf of the federal government’s Cultural and Creative Industries Initiative sheds light on the significance, current state and development of this sector within the German economy as a whole. The focus of the more recent report was “Labour and Qualifications”, for which a large-scale survey and a number of case studies were conducted within the cultural and creative industries.

For further information please contact

Dr. Jörg Ohnemus, Phone +49 (0)6211235-354, E-mail joerg.ohnemus@zew.de