Status: 16.12.2022 10:40 a.m
Full-time employees in Germany work an average of 40.5 hours a week – but every eleventh person works more than 48 hours. According to the Federal Statistical Office, this includes executives, most of whom are men.
Around every eleventh employee in Germany has excessive working hours. This is the result of a survey by the Federal Statistical Office. In 2021, 8.8 percent of full-time workers usually worked more than 48 hours a week. This is considered excessive working time. Almost every second self-employed person with employees is affected (49.9 percent). On average, full-time employees aged 15 and over work 40.5 hours a week.
“The general rule is: the older the employee, the longer the working hours,” according to the statisticians from the Federal Office. While 1.6 percent of full-time workers aged 15 to 24 worked more than 48 hours a week, the figure for those aged 55 to 64 was 11.4 percent. At 10.5 percent, men work significantly more long hours than women (5.4 percent).
Excessive working hours for executives
One of the reasons for the clear differences is the high proportion (29.4 percent) of executives who work long hours. These tend to be older and mostly men. At 29.2 percent, the proportion of women in top jobs last year was significantly lower than the proportion of women in all employees, which was 46.8 percent.
Even though there are more women in management positions today than there were almost 30 years ago (1992: 25.8 percent), in 2021 seven out of ten managers were still male.
In 2021, too, there were mainly men among managers.
Image: picture alliance/dpa
More than five percent of men work at night
14.9 percent of those in employment regularly work in the evening, i.e. between 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. The self-employed with employees (30.6 percent) work more than twice as often in the evening as employees (13.9 percent).
4.2 percent of the employed work regularly between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. Men (5.4 percent) were affected significantly more often than women (2.8 percent), according to the Federal Statistical Office.