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Demonstration of solo self-employed (archive picture)
Photo: Jörg Carstensen / DPA
The business climate for self-employed people and small businesses has recently deteriorated dramatically.
This is the result of the Jimdo Ifo business climate index.
The corresponding value of the index fell to minus 7.7 points, after minus 6.4 points in November.
The mood in this area is significantly worse than in the economy as a whole, for which the Ifo Institute has determined a value of plus seven points.
"Small businesses are suffering particularly badly from the current course of the pandemic," says Klaus Wohlrabe, head of the Ifo surveys.
In particular, the assessments of the current situation were noticeably worse.
According to Matthias Henze, head of the start-up Jimdo, around 25 percent of small businesses and self-employed people currently see their existence threatened.
"That's almost a million businesses if you assume the total number of 3.7 million self-employed and micro-businesses," he says.
The Munich-based Ifo Institute recently determined the mood among self-employed people.
Encouraged by the start-up Jimdo, which offers website builders and internet services for small businesses, the economists expanded the group of respondents for their index accordingly.
The ifo business climate index is a monthly early indicator for economic development in Germany produced by the Munich economists.
For Germany, the indicator is the best known and most widely observed business climate index.
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