Overall shift in start-up structure favouring commercial activities
A total of approximately 360,000 new businesses were founded in Germany in 2024. Around 258,000 of them were started in the commercial sector, 7,040 in agriculture and forestry, and 94,900 in the liberal professions. The commercial sector accounted for 71.7% of start-ups last year, followed by the liberal professions with 26.3% and agriculture and forestry with 2.0%.
After a gradual decline over the past ten years, the share of start-ups in the commercial sector has now increased for the first time. Researchers at IfM Bonn expect that start-up activity will continue to rise in 2025, driven by economic slowdown.
Women still prefer to start businesses in the liberal professions
Nearly one in three sole proprietorships in the commercial sector was founded by a woman (59,100 women vs. 125,600 men) in 2024. In contrast, more than every second start-up in the liberal professions was female-led (52,100 women vs. 42,800 men). In all east German states and in Schleswig-Holstein, Hamburg, Lower Saxony and Rhineland-Palatinate, the share of female founders in the liberal professions exceeded 55%.
Over the past five years, the proportion of women among self-employment in the liberal professions has as risen particularly in the occupational group of lawyers (+5.9 percentage points), followed by veterinarians, architects and medical doctors.
