Berlin´s Economic Growth 2022
The Berlin economy seems to have coped well with 2022, a year still marked by crises. The GDP growth in the German capital was above the national average. Key important drivers were the digital sector as well as tourism and hospitality.
Final figures for 2022 as a whole have not yet been published, but economic growth in the German capital is currently estimated at 2.5%. This would again be a growth result well above the national average of an estimated 1.7%. For the first half of the year, the Berlin-Brandenburg Statistics Office published Berlin's GDP growth of 3.1% (compared to the same period in 2021), this was was 2.8% above the national average.
The unemployment rate had also fallen to 8.6% in December 2022.
The Digital Economy
The German capital´s digital economy has already established itself as the capital's main growth driver for many years and has experienced a new surge since the Corona pandemic. The sector employs almost 130,000 people, more than in any German capital.
For more than a decade, the digital industry has contributed a high share of gross value added, accounting for 10% of total economic output at the end of 2021. The digital sector has also contributed enormously to employment growth since 2008 - this averaged 9.3% annually (until 2021). During this period, one in five jobs in Berlin was created in the digital economy.
And there is still an upward potential as a majority of small and medium-sized enterprises and the Berlin administration are still in need of digitalizing their processes while competitive pressure is increasing.
Tourism and Hospitality
Since the Corona crisis, Berlin has experienced a tourism comeback in the last year. Although the level of the pre-crisis year 2019 has not yet been caught up, Berlin is well on its way there and the German capital is a top European destination alongside Paris and London.
Guests from Germany made up the lion's share of visitors at 62%, while foreign guests accounted for 38% (2021: 29%), with visitors from the US making up the bulk of this, followed by the UK, the Netherlands and Spain.
In total, there were 10.4 million guests who came to Berlin in 2022. The hotel industry recorded around 26.5 million overnight stays in the city, which was 78% of the pre-crisis 2019 level and 75% of the revenue level.
Congresses and business events were key for this development, especially events in the medical sector such as the the World Health Summit, but also other B2B congresses (e.g. WeAreDevelopers, one of the largest developer congresses in the world).
Cultural tourism has also been very strong last year attracting over 80% of visitors compared to pre-pandemic levels in 2019.
All in all, Berlin was able to withstand the difficult economic conditions of 2022 and even get close to the pre-pandemic development. For the current year, however, with the ongoing economic difficulties, the Investitionsbank Berlin (IBB) expects an economically difficult year with only a slight growth just above zero, while Germany´s economy could fall in a small recession (-0.9%).