Food industry publishes annual figures for 2024: employment up

Economy still under pressure

10-Jul-2025

The Federation of the German Food and Drink Industry (BVE) and the Employers' Association for Food and Beverages (ANG) have presented their latest industry figures for 2024. A differentiated picture emerges: While the number of employees has risen, real sales development is lagging behind expectations.

"The current figures show that the industry is holding its own despite the continuing high level of pressure, albeit on increasingly thin foundations," says BVE Managing Director Christoph Minhoff. "In purely nominal terms, we recorded a slight increase in turnover of 0.6% to 232.7 billion euros. However, adjusted for prices, the turnover of the entire food industry declined slightly, as in the previous year. That is an alarm signal."

High energy and raw material costs, increased bureaucratic burdens and geopolitical conflicts pose major challenges for companies. Adjusted for prices, foreign sales also had to cope with a decline. In nominal terms, turnover increased slightly to around 84 billion euros.

Reliability of the sector as an employer

The number of employees in the food industry rose by 2.1% to 658,150 in 2024, a significant increase in difficult economic times. The sector thus remains the fourth largest industrial employer in Germany. The number of trainees also increased slightly (+2.9%), but 12.1% of training places remained unfilled.

Kim Cheng, Managing Director of the ANG, emphasizes: "The increase in the number of employees shows that companies in the food industry are holding on to their employees even in difficult economic times. This underlines the reliability of the industry as an employer. This makes it all the more important to shape the framework conditions in such a way that this stability can also be secured in the future."

This stability is also reflected in the level of collective bargaining coverage: 48% of employees are covered by collective agreements, while a further 47% of companies are guided by collective agreements.

Note: This article has been translated using a computer system without human intervention. LUMITOS offers these automatic translations to present a wider range of current news. Since this article has been translated with automatic translation, it is possible that it contains errors in vocabulary, syntax or grammar. The original article in German can be found here.

https://www.yumda.com/en/news/1186651/food-industry-publishes-annual-figures-for-2024-employment-up.html