TRANSFORMATIONS IN WORK 267
Table 5.4. Employees in the GDR according to Economic Sectors from 1950 to
1989 (in percent)
Year
Primary
(agriculture
and forestry)Secondary
(industry, craft trades,
construction, and other
production areas)Tertiary (service)Total Totalincluding
“non-
production
areas”1950 27.9 45.1 27.0 11.4 100.0
1960 17.0 49.0 34.0 15.5 100.0
1970 12.8 51.2 36.0 17.4 100.0
1975 11.3 51.5 37.2 19.0 100.0
1980 10.7 51.2 37.9 20.1 100.0
1985 10.8 50.7 38.5 21.0 100.0
1989 10.8 49.9 39.3 21.6 100.0
Source: Peter Hübner, Arbeit, Arbeiter und Technik in der DDR 1971 bis 1989. Zwischen
Fordismus und digitaler Revolution (Bonn, 2014), S. 622f. (Tab. IV/2).
In the GDR, the percentage of workers compared to the total number
of employed individuals actually stagnated or shrank in exactly those
industries that have been and continue to be the motor behind the ex-
pansion of the tertiary sector in the West. This was certainly true for
postal and telecommunications employees, who were at least initially re-
sponsible for installing the nationwide IT infrastructure needed in those
countries in which the digital revolution had made inroads. The fi gures
for this group actually dropped slightly in East Germany from 1.7 per-
cent in 1970 to 1.5 percent in 1989. Throughout the Honecker era, al-
most 6 percent of all GDR employees worked in transportation, another
important service industry. Surprisingly, the percentage of employees
involved in trade did not change much: it rose from 9.4 percent in 1950
to 11 percent in 1970, before sinking back down slightly to 10.3 percent
in 1989. Yet one specifi c area of the GDR’s service sector did grow con-
siderably, namely the “nonmanufacturing segment.” What this means
is that the increase in the percentage of employees in the GDR working
in the so-defi ned service sector was primarily the result of the infl ation
of the political administrative apparatus, as well as the Stasi and other
similar institutions, combined with the expansion of the social security
system.
Thus, the growth trends for the service sector in the two German states
could hardly have been more disparate. Whereas the private service sec-
tor gained ground on industry and the public sector in the West, the