Development of employee numbers of METRO GROUP annual average

In the financial year 2012, METRO GROUP employed an average of 248,637 full-time equivalents (previous year: 249,953). This is a decrease of 0.5 percent from the previous year. The large majority of our employees work outside our home market of Germany. In Western Europe (excluding Germany), Eastern Europe and Asia/Africa, we had 159,344 full-time equivalents, 0.4 percent more than during the previous year. A major reason for this slight increase was our international expansion effort. On average, we employ between 50 and 250 people at each new location – depending on the sales format. In Germany, by contrast, the number of full-time equivalents fell by 2.1 percent to 89,293.

In 2012, our sales line METRO Cash & Carry employed an annual average of 114,045 full-time equivalents, an increase of 1.3 percent over the previous year. A key reason for this rise was the sales line’s international expansion. At Real, the number of full-time equivalents fell by 3.9 percent to 50,394. Media-Saturn employed an annual average of 56,633 full-time equivalents in 2012, a drop of 1.7 percent compared with the previous year. At Galeria Kaufhof, the number of full-time equivalents decreased by 3.3 percent to 17,916 in 2012 compared with the previous year. The reasons for this decline included the closure of 4 stores in mid‑2012. In the real estate segment, we employed 1,476 full-time equivalents, 21.7 percent more than in the previous year. This jump primarily resulted from the bundling of our real estate know-how in METRO PROPERTIES and the transfer of METRO Cash & Carry employees to this area. The number of full-time equivalents in the “others” segment rose by 7.3 percent to 8,173.