2024-07-19 11:30:49
Is the death of pharmacies really happening? The Federal Statistical Office has the figures: more and more people have to share a pharmacy.
The supply of pharmacies is getting worse. On average, at the end of 2023, there was one pharmacy for every 4,819 people in Germany. Ten years ago, according to the Federal Statistical Office, the average was 3,909 residents.
The number of people a pharmacy has to serve varies from state to state: In the city states of Bremen (5,321), Berlin (5,290) and Hamburg (5,177), there were above-average numbers at the end of 2023. The situation was different in Saarland: Here, an average of 3,781 people per pharmacy lived there. In Saxony-Anhalt, the figure was 3,894 and in Thuringia, 4,288.
According to the results of the microcensus, around 214,000 people worked in pharmacies in this country in 2023. Pharmacists made up 27.9 percent of the staff, 31.5 percent were pharmaceutical technical assistants. Salespeople made up 16.8 percent. In addition, six percent were drivers.
Pharmacy sales increased by more than a third in real terms between 2013 and 2023. This was significantly higher than sales in stationary retail as a whole (9.1 percent more), as Wiesbaden statisticians reported.
Sales rose particularly sharply during the Corona pandemic, when pharmacies, unlike the rest of the retail sector, were never closed. However, after the sales increases in previous years, sales fell last year: in 2023, pharmacies in Germany will have three percent less sales than in the previous year.