Many people in Germany implemented their self-employment plans that were put on hold during the Corona crisis last year.
According to data from the state development bank KfW, 607,000 people realized their business start-up ideas.
That was 70,000 or 13 percent more than in the crisis year 2020. The start-up activity has thus left the Corona kink behind and has roughly reached the pre-crisis level of 2019, reported KfW Chief Economist Fritzi Köhler-Geib.
In the past year, founders more often ventured into self-employment in order to take advantage of a business opportunity that arose.
According to KfW, the proportion of so-called opportunity start-ups rose to 82 percent (2020: 80 percent).
The proportion of emergency start-ups fell to a low of 15 percent.
Necessary founders are those who become self-employed due to a lack of better employment alternatives.
In the preliminary evaluation of its start-up monitor, KfW analyzed that the heavy use of short-time work may have contributed to the fact that more people did not take up self-employment out of necessity.
The remaining 3 percent were mixed forms of opportunity and emergency start-ups.
According to the information, the majority of the founders became self-employed with new companies (85 percent).
From KfW's point of view, however, this is not good news for SMEs, which are plagued by succession worries.
The KfW start-up monitor is a representative telephone survey on start-up activities in Germany, which has been carried out annually since 2000.
It is based on information from 50,000 randomly selected people.