The message announced on the 49th floor of the Commerzbank Tower in Frankfurt am Main at the beginning of July was a happy one: at 9.8 per cent, the start-up rate in Germany is at its highest level since 1999, according to the latest Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) country report. The report was presented to around 200 participants by Christian Hundt from the Thünen Institute for Innovation and Value Creation in Rural Areas together with colleagues from the RKW Competence Centre.
The most important and encouraging result was that the TEA (Total Early-Stage Entrepreneurial Activity) start-up rate reached an all-time high of 9.8 per cent in 2024. This continues the positive trend of recent years. Compared to the average start-up rate of the three previous years, this is an increase of 25 per cent. At the same time, only three GEM countries recorded even stronger growth in their start-up rate in the same period. This makes Germany one of the four fastest-growing countries analysed in the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor.
