Company and employee statistics

The Stuttgart region is home to around 120,000 companies and nearly 130,000 businesses. In the last few years, this number has fallen slightly overall after an increase lasting many years. The number of business with 10 or more employees went up, most notably in the group of companies with 250 or more employees. In the different sectors, professional, scientific and technical services as well as wholesale and retail, including motor vehicle workshops, were the biggest group. In terms of the number of employees, more than 90 percent of all companies have fewer than ten employees, which taken together make up only around 10 percent of employees. In turn, nearly 60 percent of employees work for major corporations with more than 250 employees, even though these make up a proportion of only half a percent of all companies. The manufacturing industry - which ranks fourth compared to the number of companies - employs the largest number of people in the Stuttgart region. The highest proportion, around 200,000 persons, work in the automotive industry or in machine construction. Like vehicle construction, wholesale and retail taken together also provide jobs for more than 100,000 employees in the region, with retail having fewer employees but nearly twice as many businesses as wholesale. More than a quarter of all companies in Baden-Württemberg - 120,175 of a total of 467,205 - are situated in the Stuttgart region.

Leading by a large margin, it is followed by the regions Rhine-Neckar, Southern Upper Rhine and Central Upper Rhine, each of which is home to approx. ten percent of companies. The lowest proportion of companies in Baden-Württemberg, close to four percent of companies, is situated in the Eastern Württemberg region. Among large corporations of more than 250 employees, the proportion of companies in Stuttgart is even higher still, at more than 26 percent. Allocating the overall number of companies and employees to industries reveals regional priorities. The Stuttgart region, for instance, is home to 40 percent of all film, cinema and sound industry businesses in Baden-Württemberg, so that the proportion of this industry in the region is more than one and a half times that of the federal state as a whole. The region also has an above average number of advertising and market research institutions and creative companies.

A comparison of employee proportions also shows that the region specialises in e.g. aviation and the insurance industry. The share of employees in machine construction and in the automotive industry is also high, however at a similar level to the federal state as a whole.