Selected consumer goods sectors 1995 to 2000: Increasing sales with decreasing employment

Unlike numerous sectors of the consumer goods industry that produce goods for private as well as commercial consumption, Category 36 (furniture, jewellery, musical instruments, sports equipment and toys) of the Official Statistics contains mainly products for private consumption. This article provides an overview of the structure and development of this consumer product group from 1995 to 2000: according to number, sales and employees of the enterprises, according to development with regard to size and cost structures as well as the foreign sales of the individual product sectors. All sectors displayed growing sales and at the same time a decline in the number of enterprises and employees. The study also shows that with a slight increase in the number of small firms and a considerable decrease in their sales, and with a strong drop of the number of the large-scale operations and an increase in their sales, there were clear concentration tendencies in favour of large-scale operations.