Industrial employment in western Germany declined steadily from a postwar peak. However, deindustrialization was not as precipitous in Germany as it was in some other European countries. Western German industry benefited from the willingness of banks to take a long-term view on investment and of the federal government to underwrite research and development. German industrial products are viewed with great prestige on world markets and are in strong demand overseas. By contrast, unification revealed that most of eastern German industry was incapable of competing in a free market.

Germany is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of steel, with production concentrated in the Ruhr region; however, since the peak output of the early 1970s, a number of plants have closed. (The steel industry in eastern Germany was largely abandoned after unification, though some production was reestablished at a renovated plant at Eisenhuettenstadt.) Germany’s principal industries include machine building, automobiles, electrical engineering and electronics, chemicals, and food processing. Automobile manufacturing is concentrated in Baden-Württemberg, Lower Saxony, Hessen, North Rhine–Westphalia, Bavaria, the Saarland, and Thuringia. Leading automobile manufacturers in Germany include Audi, BMW, Daimler AG (formerly Daimler-Benz and DaimlerChrysler), Ford, Opel, and Volkswagen. Following unification, production of the environmentally unfriendly Trabant and Wartburg cars in eastern Germany ceased. Volkswagen, Opel, and Daimler-Benz were quick to establish assembly or parts production in the east. Shipbuilding, once a major industry, has declined significantly.

Since the late 19th century Germany has been a world leader in the manufacture of electrical equipment. As the home of internationally known firms such as Siemens, AEG, Telefunken, and Osram, Berlin was the industry’s principal center until World War II, after which production was largely transferred to Nürnberg-Erlangen, Munich, Stuttgart, and other cities in southern Germany. The output of these centers made Germany one of the world’s leading exporters of electrical and electronic equipment.

In East Germany electrical and electronic production was concentrated in East Berlin, with Dresden forming a second important center. The country was a major supplier of equipment (e.g., computer-controlled robots) to the communist world. Although eastern German plants were outdated in comparison with those in the west, both Dresden and Erfurt achieved some success in developing microelectronics production following unification.

With the discovery of synthetic dyestuffs in the late 19th century, Germany became a world leader in the chemical industry. Most of the western German chemical industry is concentrated along the Rhine or its tributaries, notably in Ludwigshafen, Hoechst (near Frankfurt), and Leverkusen (together with a row of other plants along the Rhine in North Rhine–Westphalia). Chemical plants also operate in the Ruhr region. The majority of East German chemical plants were on the two brown-coal fields of Lower Lusatia and Halle-Leipzig; after unification some plants were closed because of environmental reasons, and others were upgraded.

Germany is also particularly strong in the field of optical and precision industries. The once-mighty textile industry has suffered from overseas competition but is still significant. Principal centers are in North Rhine–Westphalia (Mönchen-Gladbach, Wuppertal) and southern Germany. After unification many textile plants were closed in eastern Germany, where employment in the sector plunged by some nine-tenths.