Fifty percent of Germans take pictures digitally 27. August 2007 by Thomas Jannot The market for digital photography is booming. Over the last year the percentage of German households possessing digital cameras increased from 49 to 52%. 43.4 million Germans above the age of ten, that is 58% of the entire German population, use digital cameras. On average, every German takes 55 photos per month and 7.3 million …
Moderate rise in import prices 25. August 2007 by Thomas Jannot According to the Federal Statistical Office, the import price index was up by 0.4% in July 2007 as compared to July last year. Thus, the increase was smaller than in June (+1.3%) and May (+0.6%) this year. The export price index was up by 1.6% in July this year as compared to July 2006.
Reform of immigration rules could solve problem of skills shortage 24. August 2007 by Thomas Jannot The German Association of Information Technology, Telecommunications and New Media (BITKOM) thinks that Germany needs highly qualified immigrants due to a skills shortage. According to current estimates by BITKOM there are between 25.000 and 28.000 job vacancies in the IT sector. Furthermore, other sectors ranging from mechanical engineering to trade and financial institutions look for …
Unemployment set to fall to 3.4 million in 2008 23. August 2007 by Thomas Jannot According to current labour market projections by the Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB) the number of unemployed people is to fall to about 3.4 million on average in 2008. This would be a drop by 360.000 as compared to 2007. At the same time the IAB expects the German economy to grow by 2.7 …
Global economy continues upward trend 21. August 2007 by Thomas Jannot According to the ifo Institute in Munich the global economic climate has significantly brightened up in the third quarter of 2007. This applies to both the current economic situation as well as to the six-months economic outlook. The ifo economic index increased by seven to 113.6 points hitting a seven-year record high. These findings of …
Retail store chains invest while SMEs hesitate 21. August 2007 by Thomas Jannot Big retail store chains (with an annual turnover exceeding 25 million Euros) benefit significantly from the current economic revival and expect increased turnovers this year. As a consequence these chains plan to invest more in equipment and construction activities. At the same time staff is to be taken on. On the other hand, the majority …
20 percent more turnover in games downloads 20. August 2007 by Thomas Jannot Games downloads onto personal computer are becoming more and more popular. This year Germans will presumably spend 18 million Euros on such downloads which is 20% more than in 2006. Currently one fifth of computer game players above the age of 14 download games onto their PC. In most cases, however, these downloads are free …
One quarter of all vacancies for young researchers 20. August 2007 by Thomas Jannot In the spring 2007 it was above all product managers who were sought by personnel managers. Since then, however, companies have concentrated on an innovation oriented human ressource policy: the number of vacancies for researchers has strongly increased. While in January and April 2007 about 15% of all job vacancies were addressed to developers, this …
Leasing market grows by 10 percent 17. August 2007 by Thomas Jannot According to the Association of German leasing firms (BDL) the leasing business with regard to movables grew by 10% in the first half year of 2007 and thus developed very positively. The business in the second quarter developed particularly positively and grew by 11% as compared to the same quarter last year.
Ranking of foodstuff suppliers 17. August 2007 by Thomas Jannot The corporations Nestlé, Vion and Procter & Gamble are at the top of this year´s list of major suppliers to the German foodstuff trade, as was reported by Lebensmittel Zeitung in its latest edition. The top 80 of this list have an aggregate turnover of 74 billion Euros and the ranking also shows that there …