In the first half of the year, the Hessian economy grew roughly as much as that of the entire Federal Republic.

This means that the state has caught up again after the Corona crisis in Hesse in 2020 left significantly deeper marks than elsewhere.

According to the figures published by the State Statistical Office on Friday, the gross domestic product in Hesse grew by 2.8 percent in the first six months of this year.

In Germany as a whole, growth was marginally higher at 2.9 percent.

In 2020, however, the decline in Germany was 4.9 percent, but in Hesse it was 5.6 percent

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Manfred Koehler

Deputy head of the regional section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and editor-in-chief of the business magazine Metropol.

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These are all price-adjusted figures, so the effect of inflation has been factored out.

The figures are only provisional and can still be corrected.

In the State Statistical Office it was highlighted on Friday that the growth in the current year is mainly due to the growth in sales in the industry.

Although it was affected by the pandemic early in 2020, it has recently increased significantly.

Other sectors of the economy have also recovered.

A look at the other federal states also shows that the recovery in industry is currently the engine of economic development.

Baden-Württemberg achieved the strongest growth in economic output in the first half of 2021 with a plus of 5.5 percent;

This state, too, had initially suffered in a special way from the crisis because of its important industry.

In the first half of the year, growth in Rhineland-Palatinate was 2.5 percent after adjustment for prices.

Significantly reduced jobs

In the period from 2019 to 2020, the turnover of Hessian industry dropped from 117.5 to 110.3 billion euros. In the second quarter of 2020, after the pandemic had fully erupted, another 23.0 billion were generated. In the second quarter of the current year, however, it was again 30.0 billion euros. The various branches of industry were affected differently. In 2020, sales in the automotive industry slumped by 23 percent, while conversely the important pharmaceutical industry even gained eight percent.

Employment in Hesse's industry has suffered significantly from the effects of the pandemic. In 2019 the company had 371,000 employees, in June of this year it was just 355,000. The Hessian Minister of Economic Affairs Tarek Al-Wazir (The Greens) said on Friday that the half-yearly figures showed a strong development in the state. "With its above-average share of services, as an aviation and trade fair location, Hessen has suffered particularly from the winter's Corona restrictions," said the minister. "Nevertheless, we are only slightly below the national average and in the upper third of the federal states when it comes to the recovery of the gross domestic product."as we can also see with the jobs subject to social insurance, the number of which has already exceeded the pre-crisis level ”.