AI in the skilled trades: only 4 per cent of firms use it

How far along are the German skilled trades with artificial intelligence (AI)? According to a Bitkom survey of 504 skilled-trades firms from 2025, only 4 per cent use AI, another 9 per cent plan to, and for 84 per cent AI is not a topic. In the office, by contrast, much is already digital: 85 per cent offer at least one digital customer service. For a firm, the starting point therefore lies more in office processes than in AI itself. All figures here are as of November 2026.

What the 4 per cent figure measures

Bitkom, the trade association of the digital industry, surveyed the managements of 504 skilled-trades firms with at least one employee by telephone in summer 2025 (calendar weeks 23 to 29). The answers are weighted on the basis of the Federal Statistical Office’s census of the skilled trades, and the report gives a margin of error of plus or minus 4 per cent of the total sample. The question was whether the firm already uses AI. The report gives no definition of AI for it. These are therefore self-reports, and it remains open what respondents counted as AI. In one passage the report gives 85 per cent for “not a topic”, while the chart and the rest of the text say 84. Presumably this is rounding.

For scale: with 504 respondents and a share of 4 per cent, the result varies by roughly 1.7 percentage points by calculation (my own calculation, simplified for a pure random sample). The 4 per cent should therefore be read as “very few”, not as an exact value. I did not find a more recent survey from Bitkom or from the German Confederation of Skilled Crafts (Zentralverband des Deutschen Handwerks, ZDH) on AI in the skilled trades alone. The value is a little over a year old.

Why 4, 20 and 57 per cent do not fit together

Anyone searching for AI use finds very different figures. They answer different questions:

Figure	Who was asked	When
4 % use AI	Skilled-trades firms with 1 or more employees (Bitkom, 504 firms)	Summer 2025
57 % use AI	Companies with 20 or more employees, whole economy (Bitkom, 603 companies)	Summer 2026
20 % use AI, 8 % in construction	Mittelstand, i.e. medium-sized firms (KfW SME panel)	Period 2022 to 2024

A year earlier the 57 per cent stood at 36 per cent, and two years earlier at 20 per cent. They apply only to companies with 20 or more employees, though. KfW works with its own broad definition (image, text and speech recognition, self-learning software, bots) and says itself that there is no generally accepted definition for company surveys. The 8 per cent applies to the construction sector as a whole, not to the skilled trades. The period, the size and the definition differ, so no line of development can be drawn from these. Why figures with different measurement methods should not be mixed is also shown in the article on bureaucracy and administrative time.

Firm size also plays a part. In the Bitkom report, firms with up to 4 employees rate their digitalisation at an average school grade of 3.2, and firms with 20 or more employees at 2.1 (on the German scale, where 1 is best). That is a self-assessment, but it shows the direction.

Where office work arises

The Bitkom report shows where the office and customer contact already run digitally. The shares apply to all 504 firms:

• 68 per cent send quotes digitally and 62 per cent send invoices digitally. 48 per cent offer online appointment booking, and 29 per cent document work steps digitally for the customer.
• 62 per cent use messenger apps such as WhatsApp, 77 per cent still write letters alongside them and 26 per cent still use fax (each often or occasionally).
• 56 per cent use cloud applications, meaning programs that run on the provider’s servers, and 17 per cent use smart software for organising work and business processes.

This shows where tasks arise: with quotes, invoices, appointments and documentation. It does not show how much time they cost, nor whether an automated process stands behind them. “Digital” here means first of all that something is sent by email, messenger or portal.

1. Email and smartphone: 100 %All firms surveyed use both, often or occasionally
2. Digital customer service: 85 %At least one, such as sending quotes (68 %) or invoices (62 %)
3. Cloud applications: 56 %In use; another 24 % plan it, for 17 % it is not a topic
4. Smart software: 17 %Programs for organising work and business processes
5. Artificial intelligence: 4 %In use; 9 % plan it, for 84 % it is not a topic

Text version of the graphic

• Layer 1 from the bottom: Email and smartphone: 100 %, All firms surveyed use both, often or occasionally
• Layer 2 from the bottom: Digital customer service: 85 %, At least one, such as sending quotes (68 %) or invoices (62 %)
• Layer 3 from the bottom: Cloud applications: 56 %, In use; another 24 % plan it, for 17 % it is not a topic
• Layer 4 from the bottom: Smart software: 17 %, Programs for organising work and business processes
• Layer 5 from the bottom: Artificial intelligence: 4 %, In use; 9 % plan it, for 84 % it is not a topic

The ZDH survey on e-invoicing gives a hint about volume (12 January to 27 February 2026, 1,926 firms from 52 chambers of skilled crafts). The ZDH states no weighting and does not say whether the participants are representative. According to the ZDH press release, the respondents received on average about 1,200 incoming invoices in 2025, roughly half of them as e-invoices, and processing is mostly manual. 1,200 invoices a year are 100 a month.

An example with an assumed figure: if each invoice takes 7 minutes of manual work for capturing and booking, that is 700 minutes, or 11 hours and 40 minutes a month. The 7 minutes are an assumption in the range of the IW Consult survey, which gives 6 to 9 minutes depending on the format. An average does not describe a typical firm. A small firm presumably receives considerably fewer invoices (an assumption, as the source gives no distribution). How long it really takes in your firm is a matter of measuring, as described in Measure time savings instead of promising them.

How big are the firms?

The ZDH counts 1,038,126 firms in the register of skilled crafts (31 December 2025) and an estimated 6,237,000 employment relationships, called “BV-Verhältnisse” in its table. According to the ZDH’s note, people with several jobs are counted several times. That is 6.0 employment relationships per firm by calculation. The Federal Statistical Office counts about 564,000 skilled-trades companies for 2024 with about 6.0 million people working in them, which is 10.6 per company by calculation. In the finishing trades (Ausbaugewerbe), the largest trade group, there are 213,000 companies with 1.6 million people working in them, which is 7.5 by calculation. The two bodies count differently (craft register versus business register), and I have not checked the exact reason for the difference. Neither average says anything about the distribution.

How many firms have an office clerk cannot be seen from these sources. That would matter for automation, because according to Bitkom 59 per cent of firms think digital applications pay off only for larger skilled-trades companies.

What holds firms back

In the Bitkom survey, firms name as obstacles to digitalisation in the skilled trades concerns about IT security and data protection (96 per cent), high investment costs (69 per cent), lack of maturity of the technologies (57 per cent) and lack of digital skills among staff (58 per cent). 72 per cent say they are too busy to deal with it, and 58 per cent say they lack an overview of what is available. Only 29 per cent have staff who can work with AI, and 43 per cent invest specifically in digital training. 15 per cent have an emergency management plan for a cyber attack, meaning fixed procedures for the worst case. These are the firms’ own assessments, not measured causes. At the same time 89 per cent see digitalisation as an opportunity, and only 6 per cent as a risk.

What follows from this

The conclusions below are my assessment, not a measurement.

First, the gap lies between digital sending and a continuous process. Sending a quote by email is digital. Following it up stays manual work as long as nobody records when it is due. That needs fixed rules first, not AI. What a process is in a small firm is explained in the basics article Process automation in a small business, and which tasks are unsuitable in When not to automate.

Second, any AI trial works with customer and employee data. With 96 per cent concerns and only 15 per cent emergency management, it is worth clarifying which data may go where before choosing the tool. Legal questions in an individual case are for your data protection officer or your legal adviser.

Third, time is the bottleneck. A task with a high volume, such as incoming invoices or enquiries, is therefore the first to consider, instead of many small trials. Whether a process pays off is shown by your own measurement, not by an industry figure.

What you can do now

1. Count for one month how often the three most frequent office tasks occur in your firm, for example incoming invoices, quotes and appointment requests.
2. Take the Digi-Check of the Mittelstand-Digital Zentrum Handwerk. Since 2026 it has an AI category, and according to Handwerksblatt it is free of charge and needs no registration.
3. Decide which customer and employee data may go into which program before you try an AI tool, and ask your data protection officer about it.
4. Check every candidate for a process against the questions in the article When not to automate.