Looking at the first ten months of this year as a whole, the nominal order value exceeded the previous year's level by 11.1%. Domestic and foreign orders were up 9.3% and 12.5% respectively. Customers from the eurozone increased their orders by 16.9% between January and October. Incoming orders from business partners in third countries rose by 10.1% year-on-year in the same period.

The real, i.e. price-adjusted production of electrical and electronic goods rose by 2.8% in October 2022 compared to the previous year. "It was the fourth consecutive month of year-on-year growth," says Gontermann. In the first ten months, industry output thus grew by 3.4% compared to 2021.

At 18.8 billion euros, the nominal revenue of German electrical and digital companies in October 2022 was 12.8% higher than a year earlier. Domestic sales increased by 11.0% to 8.9 billion euros. Business with customers from abroad increased by 14.3% to 9.9 billion euros. Here, 3.5 billion euros were generated with the eurozone - 10.6% more than in the previous year. Sales with foreign partners from outside the eurozone increased by 16.4% to 6.4 billion euros in October.

In the first ten months of this year taken together, aggregated industry sales amounted to € 182.9 billion, which was 11.7% higher than in the previous year. Here, domestic revenue (+13.8% to €86.7 billion) grew more strongly than international revenue (+10.0% to €96.2 billion). Between January and October, € 34.3 billion was generated with partners from the eurozone - an increase of 7.4% compared to the previous year. Revenue with third countries increased by 11.6% to €61.9 billion.

While companies continued to revise their production plans slightly downwards in November, they revised their employment plans upwards. The balance of companies expecting more or less output in the next three months fell from plus seven to plus five percentage points compared to October. The corresponding balance of employment intentions rose from plus seven to plus eleven points. Most recently, 894,300 people were employed in the German electrical and digital industry, an increase of 2.5% compared to a year ago.

"The business climate in the German electrical and digital industry fell for the fifth month in a row in November this year. Nevertheless, the most recent decline was very moderate," said Gontermann. "Although the assessment of the situation deteriorated significantly compared to the previous month, expectations recovered."