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Employment development

Employment growth

On June 30, 2023, the Federal Employment Agency registered a new high of 192,823 employees subject to social insurance contributions in Bonn. Compared to June 2022, employment figures have increased significantly by plus 2.1% or by 3,893 in absolute terms. In the same period, employment in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia grew at a much slower rate of 0.7%. The Rhein-Sieg district surrounding Bonn was even below the NRW average with employment growth of just plus 0.3%. The analysis of the Rhineland metropolitan region shows that Bonn was the second best performer here (previous year: 1st place). Only the city of Düsseldorf performed better here, with employment growth of plus 2.4% in 2023. In comparison, the neighboring cities of Cologne with +1.2% and Leverkusen with +0.7% show significantly lower growth. Bonn is in fourth place across NRW (as in the previous year). 

Compared to the year of the Bonn/Berlin relocation decision in 1991 with 134,199 employees subject to social security contributions, their number has increased significantly by 58,624 (+43.7%) due to the long-term positive growth trend in Bonn.

According to the available estimates of the “Federal and State Employment Accounts” working group, the number of people in employment in Bonn in 2022 is 262,600 (previous year: 256,400). In addition to employees subject to social security contributions, the employment figures also include civil servants, the self-employed, family workers and marginally employed persons. Compared to 1991, Bonn has seen an increase of 74,300 people in employment, an increase of 39.5%. In contrast, the number of people in employment in NRW as a whole only increased by 20.5%.

Growth in services

The number of employees subject to social insurance contributions in Bonn's service sector grew significantly between 2022 and 2023, with an increase of 3,834 employees or +2.2%. In mid-2023, 179,470 people are employed in the service sector in Bonn, which corresponds to 93.1% of all employees. This makes Bonn one of the largest service locations in Germany, similar to Frankfurt/Main or Potsdam. On average in NRW, 74.3% of all employees worked in the tertiary sector in mid-2023. The industrial sector in NRW accounted for around 25.2% of all employees. Compared to the previous year, the number of employees in the manufacturing sector in NRW increased very slightly by +0.1%. In Bonn, employment in production also increased slightly by +0.4% (+57 in absolute terms). The share of the manufacturing sector in Bonn in mid-2023 is still 6.9% (previous year: 7.0%).

Highly qualified employees

In its statistics, the Federal Employment Agency uses the characteristic “academic degree” to record the degrees “Bachelor's, Diplom, Magister, Master's, state examination, doctorate”. On June 30, 2023, the city of Bonn had 34.8% of all employees with an academic degree. That is 67,100 employees in absolute terms (previous year: 64,815), with more women (34,846 employees) than men (32,254 employees) now registered with an academic degree. The NRW average is 18.0%, the national average is 19.3% and the figure for the Rhein-Sieg district is 15.1%. A regional comparison with the more than 400 German cities and districts shows that Bonn is in ninth place (previous year: seventh) and only Munich with 41.3%, Erlangen with 38.8%, Munich (district) with 37.0%, Jena and Stuttgart with 36.2% each, Darmstadt with 36.0%, Heidelberg with 35.4% and Frankfurt a.M. with 34.9% can boast even higher figures. From the perspective of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, the cities of Düsseldorf (30.9%), Cologne (28.9%) and Münster (26.5%) also have comparatively high shares of this indicator, which is important for the future of an innovative knowledge society, alongside Bonn, which has the highest shares.

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

Mr. Dr. Matthias Schönert