Economy-
Before the reunification of Germany and the two Berlin parts in 1990, the city of West Berlin received substantial subsidies from the West German state to compensate for its geographic isolation from West Germany. Many of those subsidies were phased out after 1990. The reduced financial support for the city and its gradual economic decline have produced fiscal difficulties for Berlin's city government and forced it to cut funding for various programs. The current unemployment rate remains therefore above the German average at 16.1% as of November 2006.


Unemployment and poverty figures are higher than the national average in Berlin.

The gross state product of Berlin totaled €79.6 ($95.5) billion in 2005 and compares with €77.4 billion in 1995. Among the 20 largest employers are the railway company Deutsche Bahn AG, the hospital company Charité, Siemens, the local public transport company BVG, the service provider Dussmann and the Piepenbrock Group. DaimlerChrysler manufactures cars and BMW motorcycles in Berlin. BayerSchering Pharma and Berlin Chemie are major pharmaceutical companies headquartered in the city. The Science and Business Park of Berlin-Adlershof is is among the 15 biggest scientific and technological parks world-wide and expanding model in modern city planning.

Sony Center in Berlin.

Core and fast-growing sectors are communications, life sciences, mobility and services with information and communication technologies, media and music, advertising and design, biotechnology and environmental services, transportation and medical engineering. The city of Berlin is among the top five congress cities in the world and is home to Europe's biggest convention center in the form of the Internationales Congress Centrum (ICC). It contributes to the rapidly increasing tourism sector which encompasses 580 hotels, 87 000 beds and numbers around 16.0 million overnight guests in 2006, making the city the third most visited city in the European Union