1. Home
  2. Studies
  3. The Structure of Labour Costs in the German Economy
Christoph Schröder IW-Trends No. 2 25. June 2013 The Structure of Labour Costs in the German Economy
The Structure of Labour Costs in the German Economy
Christoph Schröder IW-Trends No. 2 25. June 2013

The Structure of Labour Costs in the German Economy

German Economic Institute (IW) German Economic Institute (IW)

In 2012 labour costs per full-time employee in manufacturing (including energy and construction) rose by 2.9 per cent in western Germany and by 3.5 per cent in the east. In the west, cost growth was much weaker than in previous years. However, this difference must be viewed in the light of the return of working hours to their pre-crisis level in 2010 and 2011. With a cost level of 40,540 euros, eastern German manufacturing is maintaining its cost advantage of around one third over its western German counterpart (61,200 euros). In services, there is a wide gap between the transport sector (43,980 euros) and the wholesale and retail trade (46,210 euros), on the one hand, and financial service providers (78,420 euros), on the other. Despite a decline in costs in 2012, at 61,860 euros business services also have slightly higher labour costs than industry.

Download | PDF

More on the topic

Read the article
Männlicher Programmierer, der zu Hause in seinem Heimbüro arbeitet
Andrea Hammermann / Roschan Monsef / Oliver Stettes IW-Trends No. 4 22. January 2025

More Productive with AI?: How Companies and Employees Assess its Effects on Productivity

Almost one third of all employees in Germany have had at least one new artificial intelligence (AI) application introduced at their workplace since 2022. AI is most commonly used for automatic data processing and text recognition.

IW

Read the article
Oliver Stettes IW-Report No. 1 19. January 2025

Proliferation of works councils and the desire for interest representation

Works councils exist in 7 per cent of the German establishments with five and more employees. The coverage rate has fallen significantly in the long run. Non-existence of works councils is, however, not equivalent to a lack of participation by the employees.  ...

IW

More about this topic

Content element with id 8880 Content element with id 9713