Employment and Labour Market
In Mecklenburg-Vorpommern about 732,200 people were gainfully employed in 2008 – 657,100 of them were white and blue collar workers. Compared with 2007 approximately 4,200 new jobs were created. Each employee worked an average of 1,455 hours a year and thus about 23 hours more than in the old German states. The number of self-employed did not change in 2008. Their percentage of the labour force was about 10.3 percent.
A good three fourths of all people in work are employed in the service sector. One quarter of them work in trade, the catering and hotel business and transport, while approximately one seventh provides service to companies and almost 40 percent work in the field of public and private service. Nearly one fifth of the labour force is employed in industry (construction, mining, energy). About four percent of the employed work in agriculture, forestry and fishery.