Germany DIHK business situation: information economy
Germany DIHK business situation: information economy stood at 7 in May 2026, according to German Chamber of Commerce and Industry (DIHK). It is one of the indicators in the DIHK Business Survey table (Value · Monthly), with a complete series running from Sep 2003 to May 2026. The complete series with an interactive chart, free to download.
This indicator in the DIHK Business Survey table
| Indicator | 05-2026 | 01-2026 | 09-2025 | 05-2025 | 01-2025 | 09-2024 | 05-2024 | 01-2024 | 09-2023 | 05-2023 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All industries | -3 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 5 | 7 | 9 | 19 | |
| Services (excluding trade) | 3 | 10 | 10 | 8 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 18 | 21 | |
| Information economy | 7 | 7 | 5 | 12 | 14 | 13 | 23 | 25 | 20 | 33 |
Understanding germany DIHK business situation: information economy
Gathers the immediate commercial evaluations from software developers, telecommunications providers, data processors, and digital media publishers. Nestled securely inside the non-trade tertiary umbrella, it isolates enterprises entirely reliant on digital infrastructure and intellectual property, setting them fundamentally apart from physical logistics or manual hospitality services. The scope strictly covers the creation, transmission, and hosting of digital assets rather than the physical manufacturing of servers or computer hardware.
Assessing the raw balance score against the equivalent month in the prior year is standard industry practice to completely bypass cyclical software purchasing cycles and enterprise budget renewals. The indicator serves as a locked-in historical record of digital sector sentiment, structurally immune to the heavy retroactive revisions common in official gross value-added statistics. When reading the metric alongside broader corporate investment data, users should remember that highly positive balances here often correlate with intense efficiency drives across other sectors, as legacy businesses dramatically increase their software spending to automate traditional manual processes.
Frequently asked questions
- Does this category encompass companies assembling servers or smartphones?
- Physical hardware production is categorized within industrial output, leaving this row exclusively for software, telecommunications, and digital processing.
- Are traditional print media operations tracked in this metric?
- Print publishing typically falls into manufacturing, whereas digital publishing and broadcasting are captured within this specific tertiary grouping.
- How does the index handle companies that span both software and physical retail?
- Enterprises are classified based on their primary source of gross value added, steering pure digital operations into this specific bracket.