Vacation money to the salary: which industries pay the most

According to the official statistics, employees received an average of EUR 1644, with a collective agreement in 2024. However, only about every second one works in a company for which a collective agreement applies. The intended holiday allowance from operation to operation also fluctuates heavily in height.

The Economic and Social Science Institute (WSI) of the Hans Böckler Foundation, which is close to the trade union, has therefore evaluated the information from almost 70,000 people from the private sector who have entered their salary on the. For the middle wage groups in companies with and without a collective agreement.

Result: While just around 200 euros in agriculture are paid for vacation pay, it is usually more than 2000 euros in the industrial sectors that process paper, plastic or metal. The investigation also came out: 74 percent of the surveyed in the private sector is given vacation pay. In companies without a collective agreement, it is just half as many.

In general, the same applies as the salary: in larger companies with strong unions on site, whitewashes are more common and higher than in small companies. And there are also differences between East and West, as the following table shows.

Where vacation pay is paid, there is usually also. This is usually even higher than the vacation allowance. As a rule of thumb, one can say: At Christmas there is often a 13th monthly salary, while the holiday allowance is often significantly below.

In the public service, the holiday allowance was brought together twenty years ago with the Christmas bonus – and has been granted as a year specialty since then. That is why the WSI has limited its evaluation to the private sector. There are only occasionally similar regulations, for example in the iron and steel industry, where an annual special payment of 110 percent of a monthly salary is agreed.

The holiday allowance is usually paid out with the Juni or July content. According to the Federal Vacation Act, every employee must be granted four weeks of vacation a year. In most collective agreements, six weeks are planned-30 days of vacation on a 5-day week.