Work
Part -time rate in Germany one of the highest in the EU
The Germans would have to work more to secure their prosperity, the economy demands. Part -time is often a thorn in the side. Are the Germans lazy? New data does not support this.
Employees in Germany are at the top of the EU when it comes to part -time. In 2024, 29 percent of the workers between the ages of 15 and 64 worked part -time in Germany, showing data from the European Labor Pens survey, which the Federal Statistical Office in Wiesbaden published. The part -time quota was only higher in the Netherlands (43 percent) and Austria (31 percent).
For comparison: only 18 percent of the workers worked part-time across the EU. Women in Germany were more than four times as often part -time (48 percent) as men, of whom it was 12 percent. The gender difference is lower at the EU level.
In view of the economic crisis in Germany, the calls become louder after longer working hours and less part -time. This is the only way to secure prosperity in Germany, arguments for business associations and managers. The Federal Government wants to introduce a weekly instead of a daily maximum working time-which unions rejected as the end of the eight-hour day.
Working hours in Germany only just below EU cut
The view that the Germans work relatively little cannot be read from the official data. The weekly working time of full-time employees in Germany is only just below the EU average (40.3 hours) at 40.2 hours, writes the Federal Statistical Office. “In the past ten years, working hours in Germany and across the EU has decreased slightly”.
In Germany, the higher part-time employment in the EU comparison is also accompanied by higher employment. According to this, 77 percent of the 15- to 64-year-old population in this country were employed in this country-a record that was well above the EU employee quota of 71 percent. In women, the employment rate was even 8 percentage points above the EU average with 74 percent.
Weekly working time debate
“In Germany, the employment rate is particularly high in women-a pleasant development,” says Yvonne Lott, work-time expert at the economic and social science institute of the union-related Hans Böckler Foundation. “The federal government can build on it by further strengthening the compatibility of work and family, for example through clever working time models that promote predictable and moderate daily working hours.”
The plans to abolish the daily maximum working hours went in the wrong direction. “Very long daily working hours made people with a worry to be more difficult to work.”
dpa
Source: Stern
