Nearly half of self-employed persons in Germany are currently complaining about a lack of assignments, reports The Local Germany, citing a survey from the Munich-based Ifo Institute. The survey showed that freelancers or self-employed in Germany depend on these assignments or orders from customers, whether an architect who designs buildings or a caterer looking to deliver food at events. As opposed to employees with an unlimited contract, their livelihood depends on their clients and the income they receive from them. But the figures put a dampener over the current climate for freelancers which showed 47.9% of self-employed people reported struggling to get new orders from clients in January, up from 45.3% in October, according to the survey.  

“The order books of the self-employed are plainly melting away,” said Ifo expert Katrin Demmelhuber in a statement. "The associated decline in revenue is a cause for concern." Not only did the 1,500 surveyed self-employed people, who ranged from individual freelancers to 'micro-enterprises' with less than nine employees, rate their current situation as worse than in the autumn, but they also had pessimistic expectations for the coming six months.