The number of business start-ups in Bonn in 2023 was 3,897, a very significant increase of +71.1% compared to the previous year. In NRW as a whole, growth was significantly weaker at +11.1%. At the same time, the number of business deregistrations in Bonn also increased sharply by +59.2%, with a total of exactly 2,599 deregistrations in 2023. The average number of deregistrations in the state of NRW also increased by +7.1% year-on-year. Due to the very large number of business registrations, Bonn has a clearly positive balance of 1,298 net new businesses in 2023. This means that the number of net new businesses has roughly doubled over the year (previous year: 644).

With the study "Freiberufliche Existenzgründungen in Deutschland und seinen Regionen im Jahr 2014", the Bonn Institute for SME Research (IfM) has for the first time comprehensively determined the number of start-ups in the liberal professions based on data from the tax authorities. Start-up activity in the liberal professions is primarily concentrated in large cities, whereby the IfM researchers assume that these are particularly attractive for start-ups in the liberal professions "...if the local demand for services is stimulated by government or administrative institutions, company headquarters and/or numerous cultural institutions. In addition, local universities and other educational and research institutions generate a large potential workforce for the liberal professions, which tend to have a high affinity for self-employment."

According to IfM data, 565 start-ups in the liberal professions were registered in the City of Bonn in 2023 (2022: 526, 2021: 630, 2020: 585, 2019: 737). This corresponds to 23rd place of all 400 German independent cities and districts (previous year: 24th place). In the Rhine-Sieg district, 729 people took up freelance work.

In relation to the Bonn regional planning region (ROR), which is made up of the city of Bonn and the Rhein-Sieg district, the number of business start-ups in 2023 is 1,294. The figures for freelance business start-up intensity (business start-ups per 10,000 working-age inhabitants) in Bonn are

population) are 26.1 in Bonn and 20.0 in the Rhine-Sieg district. The value for the Bonn regional planning region is 22.3 start-ups per 10,000 employable inhabitants.

Compared to all 96 German regional planning regions, the Bonn ROR has thus risen to 6th place

(previous year: 9th place). This means that ROR Bonn is once again one of the 10 regional planning regions with the highest start-up rate in the liberal professions. The leading regions here are Berlin (start-up intensity of 50.2), Hamburg (34.0), Munich (32.4), West Saxony/Leipzig (29.8) and Cologne (27.6).

In Bonn, a total of 84 companies filed for insolvency proceedings in 2023, compared to 51 companies in 2022. A total of 427 employees were affected in 2023 (previous year: 242 employees).

The self-employment rate records the percentage share of self-employed persons in all employed persons at the place of work. According to the data currently available, the number of self-employed persons in Bonn in 2022 was 15,500 (previous year: 15,700); the number of employed persons was 262,400 (previous year: 256,400). This corresponds to a slightly lower self-employment rate of 5.9% in Bonn compared to the previous year (previous year: 6.1%). It should be noted that the absolute number of self-employed persons fell by 200. At the same time, the total number of people in employment increased by several thousand. The number of employees in 2022 was 247,100; according to the definition of the Federal Statistical Office, this includes blue-collar workers, white-collar workers, civil servants, soldiers and trainees. The self-employment rate for NRW as a whole was 7.8% in 2022, which is also down 0.2 percentage points on the previous year.