Hardly to be shaken by Corona, with a higher turnover than the local pharmaceutical industry and in Darmstadt even an employer for every thirteenth employee: Information and communication technology (ICT) companies in Hesse have developed into a decisive economic factor that is still growing.
This is shown in the figures of a current report on the situation in the industry in Hesse, which was commissioned by the Digital Ministry and presented by Minister Kristina Sinemus (CDU) on Monday.
Inga Janovic
Editor in the regional section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and responsible editor of the business magazine Metropol.
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Sinemus praised Hessen as having the best prerequisites for successfully shaping digital change.
Her vision of developing the federal state “into the Silicon Valley of Europe” was not made out of thin air, the prerequisites for this were also in view of the training and research priorities at the universities, the orientation of the local start-up scene and of course the concentration on Data centers and Internet service providers available.
In the case of Hesse, however, the valley in which the technological advances are being developed is clearly in the south of the state: all the strongholds of the industry, i.e. the cities and districts in which it employs a particularly large number of people, are in the administrative district of Darmstadt.
The only exceptions to this rule are Giessen and Kassel.
ICT companies continue to have high labor demand
The total of 10,371 companies that can be assigned to the information and telecommunications industry according to the commercial register generated sales of almost 34 billion euros in 2020.
That was already 50 percent more than the 22.5 billion euros listed in the last report of this kind from 2015.
For the year 2022, which is not yet included in the statistics, the authors predict a further increase to total sales of almost 39 billion euros.
This puts the computer, data and telephony specialists well ahead of the pharmaceutical industry, whose sales in Hesse were recently 25 billion euros - although there were just 86 companies that generated this amount.
The number of employees in ICT companies has risen by a similarly large amount to that seen in sales: according to projections, it should have been 129,000 last year; in 2015 this figure was 93,300.
Even in the first year of the corona pandemic, when the entire industry had to accept a small drop in sales, the number of employees increased.
And it could continue to rise: a good half of the companies surveyed for the study stated that they needed more employees.
Specialists would be particularly welcome.
The service providers in the industry, which include IT consultants, software developers and cloud providers such as data center operators and telecommunications providers, are likely to be looking for them in particular.
They dominate the industry, around nine out of ten ITC companies can be assigned to this sub-sector, and they account for around two thirds of total sales.
Manufacturers are declining, but sales are still rising sharply
While this sector is growing, especially in consulting and telecommunications services, but of course also in the data center sector, the number of companies that produce technical equipment for telecommunications and consumer electronics has fallen continuously.
However, this does not apply to their sales, which increased by 1.6 billion to 5.9 billion euros in the seven-year period.
There are currently around 600 manufacturers for the ICT sector in the country, compared to 738 in 2015.
The manufacturers of electronic components and printed circuit boards have remained stable, and the number of twelve companies specializing in magnetic and optical data carriers has remained the same for years.
The trend in the wholesale companies for the industry is similar, but the sums are more significant, of which there have been around 400 for years.
Their sales have increased by 2.6 billion euros since 2015 to 9.3 billion euros in 2022.