64,000 posts for engineers vacant in April 14. May 2009 by Thomas Jannot According to Ingenieurmonitor there are currently 64,000 vacant posts for engineers in Germany. Even though the number of vacancies fell by 2% as compared to March, the demand for engineers is still much higher than the respective offer. All in all there is a lack of about 40,000 engineers on the labour market. About half …
Wholesale trade prices stop falling 12. May 2009 by Thomas Jannot In contrast to the past eight months when wholesale trade prices were continuously falling, these stabilized in April this year and even slightly increased by 0.1% on March. In comparison with April last year, however, the wholesale trade price index in April this year was down by 8.1%. A similar big annual drop was last …
SMEs seriously hit by crisis in first quarter this year 12. May 2009 by Thomas Jannot According to Creditreform, German small and medium-sized entities (SMEs) were severely affected by the current economic crisis. All sectors felt the repercussions of the global recession on their sales and profit figures. Particularly affected were businesses from the raw material processing industry, construction industry, the metal processing and electronic industry. Furthermore, financing conditions remained dissatisfactory …
Output of crude steel more than halved in April 11. May 2009 by Thomas Jannot German metallurgical plants produced about 1.06 million tons of pig iron and 1.88 million tons of crude steel in April 2009 which was 56.8% and 53.1% respectively less than in April last year. There have never been such big year-to-year drops before in the entire history of the Federal Republic of Germany, according to the …
One in ten Germans buy medicine over the internet 11. May 2009 by Thomas Jannot Traditional local pharmacies in Germany have every reason to be worried, given that about seven million Germans have already bought medicine online which is ten percent of Germans older than fourteen. This applies to both freely available medicine as well as medicine obtainable on prescription only. In particular popular is the online purchase of medicine …
Water technology provides opportunities of future business to SMEs 11. May 2009 by Thomas Jannot According to the Federal Ministry for the Environment (BMU), the German water industry increased its exports last year. Thus, the water sector once more showed its potential as a booming market with a bright future. On the occasion of the conference of the German water economy in Berlin, Mrs. Astrid Klung, permanent secretary, said that …
German foreign trade gaining momentum in March 8. May 2009 by Thomas Jannot According to provisional calculations by the Federal Statistical Office, German exports amounted to 70.3 billion Euros and imports to 59.0 billion Euros in March 2009. Thus, even though exports and imports were down by 15.8% and 11.6% respectively in March as compared to March last year, they increased in comparison with February this year by …
More than 300 million Euros in turnover generated online with flowers 7. May 2009 by Thomas Jannot Next Sunday will be Mother’s Day and flower online shops will presumably be very happy about good business given that an ever growing number of people order flowers via their computers. Three million Germans have already at least once ordered flowers online, according to a study by BITKOM. Therefore, BITKOM estimate that annual turnover generated …
Sales of consumer electronics set to decrease 7. May 2009 by Thomas Jannot According to the German Association for Information Management, Telecommunications and New Media (BITKOM), for the first time in more than ten years the German and European markets for consumer electronics are predicted to shrink in volume in 2009. For Germany BITKOM experts forecast a drop in turnover by 7% to 12.5 billion Euros and for …
Men in particular affected by increasing unemployment 7. May 2009 by Thomas Jannot Unemployment which is currently on the rise is particularly affecting men. This is the finding of a study carried out by the Institute for the German Economy in Cologne. Thus, in April this year unemployment was up by 170,000 people as compared to April in 2008. The unemployment rate increased from 8.1% to 8.6%. In …