Self-Employment in Germany: The Trend Has Been Increasing for Some Time

Michael Fritsch (), Alexander Kritikos and Alina Rusakova
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Alina Sorgner

DIW Economic Bulletin, 2012, vol. 2, issue 3, 17-26

Abstract: Entrepreneurial self-employment in Germany has undergone a strong upturn in the last 20 years. The number of self-employed people rose by 40 percent between 1991 and 2009. The reasons for this development are the catch-up processes in eastern Germany, structural change towards the service sector, and a strong willingness among the highly skilled, the unmarried and among foreigners to enter self-employment. Furthermore, the percentage of women becoming involved in start-ups increased substantially during the monitoring period. The decision to take up self-employment generally pays off: after three years, 38 percent of all entrepreneurs still being active in the market had a higher income, while only 17 percent had a lower income than in their former paid employment position.

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; self-employment; start-ups (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D22 J23 L26 M13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_ ... n_bull_2012-03-3.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:diw:diwdeb:2012-3-3

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in DIW Economic Bulletin from DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Bibliothek ().