Bremenruns on a handful of strong industries. If you’re job-hunting or weighing a move, here’s where the opportunities (and the big-name employers) are.
Top industries & employers
Aerospace & space
Airbus Defence and Space, OHB SE, ArianeGroup, Rheinmetall Electronics, DLR Institute of Space Systems, ZARM
Bremen's business development agency counts more than 140 aerospace companies and around 12,000 jobs in the sector — the Columbus laboratory now on the International Space Station was assembled here, and OHB is the first German space group to have listed on the stock exchange.
Automotive
Mercedes-Benz Werk Bremen (Sebaldsbrück)
The single largest private employer in the city, building saloons and electric models in Sebaldsbrück and anchoring a supplier network across the whole Weser region.
Steel
ArcelorMittal Bremen
An integrated steelworks on the Weser employing around 3,000 people, and the centre of the city's long-running argument about how a heavy-industry port town decarbonises.
Maritime logistics & ports
BLG Logistics, Eurogate, bremenports, Beluga-era shipping and forwarding firms
Bremen handles the general cargo and the corporate functions; Bremerhaven, 60 km downriver but in the same Land, handles the container terminal and one of the world's largest car terminals. The two halves of the state are effectively one logistics business.
Food, drink & consumer goods
Beck's (AB InBev), Vitakraft, Hachez, Melitta's Bremen operations
Bremen was built on coffee, tea, tobacco and cotton imports, and the descendants of that trade are still here — the Beck's brewery on the Neustadt bank is the most visible, but the commodity trading houses behind it are the older story.
Research & higher education
Universität Bremen, Constructor University, Alfred-Wegener-Institut (Bremerhaven), MARUM, Fraunhofer IFAM, DFKI Bremen
Marine and polar science is the genuine specialism — MARUM holds one of the world's largest seabed core repositories and the Alfred Wegener Institute runs Germany's polar programme from Bremerhaven. The university's 146-metre drop tower does the microgravity research that the aerospace cluster feeds off.
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