Industry revenues increased 17.6% year-on-year last year and 24.5% more than in 2019, the year before the pandemic. This means that the industry appears to have recovered three years after the coronavirus crisis began.
The corona crisis has had a major impact on the automotive and motorcycle industry. In addition to the worldwide shortage of chips, there have been temporary factory closures. This has had consequences for car importers and new car sales. Furthermore, dealers were not allowed to receive customers in their showroom.
Subbranches
All sub-sectors showed growing data last year, even compared to 2019. The auto repair and trade sub-sector recorded the highest revenue growth in 2022. Companies in this sub-sector were least affected by the chip shortage in the second half of the year and more electric cars were sold. With electric cars generally being more expensive, it is also evident that more and more Chinese brands are entering the European market, according to Statistics Netherlands.
To trust
Business confidence in the automotive and motorcycle industries also increased at the start of the first quarter of 2023, according to Statistics Netherlands. However, entrepreneurs are still not as positive as in the third quarter of 2021. Confidence in the automotive and motorcycle industry is higher than in other sectors.
Statistics Netherlands also notes that the tight job market also remains evident in the automotive and motorcycle industries. Slightly more companies (35.7%) reported a staff shortage at the start of Q1 2023. At the start of Q4 2022, this was 34.9%. The number of vacancies has decreased slightly.