Employed people in Germany rarely have to work long hours. Of the approximately 30 million people with full-time jobs, 8.3 percent usually spent more than 48 hours a week at work last year, as the Federal Statistical Office reported on Friday based on the microcensus.
That was still just under 2.5 million people, but also the lowest level since 1991. In 2021, 8.9 percent of full-time employees said they were still confronted with excessive working hours. These are particularly widespread among the self-employed, for whom the German Working Time Act with an upper limit of 48 hours per week does not apply, as it does for freelancers.
If the self-employed employed people in the company, 48.2 percent of the bosses are regularly in the company longer than 48 hours. For solo self-employed, the rate is still 26.0 percent. Only one in 20 employees has to work more than 48 hours. Here, too, the law lists a whole series of exceptions, for example for executives, chief physicians or pastors. Other regulations apply to personnel in aviation, inland waterways and road transport.
According to the German Working Hours Act, the daily working time for employees may average eight hours, and ten hours are also allowed on individual days. The rest periods between two working periods are also regulated. The exact working hours are regulated by the respective employment or collective agreements. In the West German metal and electrical industry, for example, the 35-hour week applies to full-time employees. Additional overtime must be agreed.
A problem of particularly well-qualified workers
There are currently conflicts about the design of the recording of working hours, which the European Court of Justice and the Federal Labor Court are making mandatory.
Excessive working hours are often a problem for particularly well-qualified workers, as analyzes by the Institute for Labor Market and Occupational Research (IAB) show. These people – both men and women – act largely independently in their job, want to achieve a lot and have a career. But that should not lead to 60-hour weeks, warns IAB expert Enzo Weber. It is important to fit the jobs into one’s own life, which is what more and more employees are demanding. Flexible working time models and mobile work opportunities are effective tools for this.
On the other hand, more than 700,000 people who, according to the Federal Statistical Office, are involuntarily in part-time jobs and who see this as an “emergency solution” in the microcensus survey, clearly want to work more. That was 5.7 percent of the approximately 12.5 million part-time employees in Germany last year. This share is also declining, it has almost tripled within ten years (2012: 15.4 percent).
The IAB looked for reasons why desired working hours deviate so greatly from the status quo. In the case of women in particular, family circumstances often stand in the way of longer working hours. Children have to be looked after, relatives cared for: this work is still mostly left to women, especially when there are insufficient public offers, says IAB researcher Weber. “Only in very rare cases do women work shorter hours than they want because there are no full-time positions.”
This situation can be changed through the expansion of public childcare services, a more balanced division of care work between the relationship partners and flexible individual work opportunities. According to Weber’s assessment, many underemployed people are also stuck in professional dead ends. Up to half of the mini-jobbers actually want to work more, but have come to terms with the current situation for various reasons. “Many need an impetus from outside to open up their situation,” the labor market researcher is convinced.