The share of staff costs in the total expenses of the theatres has been around 73 % since the 2010 fiscal year, most recently it was 72.3 %. In the fiscal years 2000 to 2005, staff expenses still accounted for 75 % and more of the budget. The highest expenditure was on permanent artistic staff, which amounted to more than 1.1 billion euros in the 2019 fiscal year. The costs for technical and artistic-technical staff were most recently 790 million euros. Administrative and maintenance staff accounted for expenditure of 211 million euros, other staff for 336 million euros.
Material expenses amounted to 801 million euros in the 2019 fiscal year, which corresponded to a share of the total expenses of more than 23 %.
Note
The theatre statistics are drawn from a complete survey based on written questionnaires submitted to publicly financed theatres and orchestras regarding their business operations (venues, range of events, attendance figures, staff, financing). The figures in the time line are not always comparable, for some venues could not be used owing to construction work and/or the collected data is incomplete owing to lack of responses, especially in the earlier years. Because of rounding, the totals of individual items may differ from the grand totals. Moreover, not all figures included in the grand totals are necessarily itemised in the subordinate positions.
Footnotes
- Excluding other events and theatre related accompanying programmes.
- Including part-time staff, temporary employees etc.
- Interest and repayment services, special funding expenses, construction costs.
- Due to changes in the classification scheme effective since the fiscal year 2004, the data from 2004 onwards can only be compared to a limited extent with data from previous years.
Source information
Compiled and calculated by the German Music Information Centre from the various issues of Theaterstatistik, published annually by the German Theatre and Orchestra Association (Deutscher Bühnenverein).
