German Mittelstand consists of small, medium-sized, and large family-owned companies.
Calculating based on the European Commission's definition of SMEs, there were around 3.35 million SMEs in Germany in 2020. That makes 99.3% of all companies in the private sector.
Despite the Covid-19 pandemic, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) generated more than 2.3 trillion euros in 2020, almost 34% of German total turnover. Its contribution – as well as that to the net value added of all companies (over 60 %) - was at a similar level to that in 2019.
Research and development investments and export activities remained largely at 2019 level
Despite the difficulties of 2020, small and medium-sized enterprises continued to invest at levels similar to 2019. SMEs invested 7.68 billion euros in research and development in 2020. Their share of total research and development expenditure in the business enterprise sector was at a similar level as in the same period of the previous year.
Even though SMEs only exported goods worth around 207 billion euros in the first pandemic year (2019: 215 billion euros), their share of export sales of all companies was still at the 2019 level. In addition, official statistics do not consider goods shipped to private European residents, or services exports. As a result, the export sales of SMEs is likely to be even somewhat higher.
Fewer apprentices, constant number of employees
While the share of apprentices in small and medium-sized enterprises fell slightly in 2020 (2020: 70.6%; 2019: 71%), the number of employees remained the same. 54.4% of all employees belonged to small and medium-sized enterprises.
However, the German Mittelstand does not only include small and medium-sized enterprises. It also consists of large family businesses, as long as they fulfil the Mittelstand characteristic - unity of ownership and management. However, official statistics do not reflect these qualitative Mittelstand characteristics well (type of management, ownership and economic independence). Therefore, IfM Bonn researchers can only report the economic significance of SMEs.
