Officials: Do we also get by with fewer civil servants?

The claim is not new, but reliably ensures heated discussions: the federal government of taxpayers wants to drastically reduce the number of officials. President Rainer Holznagel criticized: “The public budgets are made by the XXL civil servant relationships extremely stressed. Therefore, the civil servant status should be put to the test and critically questioned, including its privilegesto “limit to the sovereign core areas, namely” with the police, in the financial administration and in the judiciary. “

In 2024, a total of 5.3 million employees worked in the public service in Germany. The largest group formed 3.4 million employees. These include nurses in public hospitals or firefighters. With almost 1.8 million people, officials and judges form the second largest group. Their number has remained largely stable in the past 30 years (see graphic).

Politicians have recently repeatedly become demands to reform the civil servant status. Minister of Labor and SPD chairman Bärbel BAS would prefer to pay the civil servants into statutory pension insurance in order to fill up the notoriously clammy cash registers. Taxpayer President Rainer Holznagel are also a thorn in the side of the privileges associated with the status. “No employees in the free economy can be explained anymore because the financial scissors are falling apart,” said Holznagel. The pension burden of the officials must only pay the future generation. This is unfair and leads “to a disagreement in society”.

Even from the CDU, particularly secretary Carsten Linnemann, sympathy comes for the suggestion. In ministries, “not everyone has to be civil served, by the way, not in the administrations,” says Linnemann.

Officials are not only released from deposits to the pension fund and unemployment insurance, they also benefit from other privileges: Almost guaranteed job security, safe and predictable income, regulated pension claims as well as better conditions for loans and in insurance companies. In return, they commit themselves to neutrality and waive their right to strike.

Frank Zitka, spokesman for the civil servant association (DBB), explains: “There is a special commitment. The officials do without the right to strike, promise an unconditional loyalty to employers and constitution and the state in return its special care.“

For him, the advance of the taxpayers’ association is simply “gross nonsense”. It is particularly questionable to recognize the civil servant status to the teachers.“Teachers also perform a sovereign task,” says Zitka. Many professional groups would become much more unattractive without civil servant status. “We can often only advertise with the civil servant status,” says the press spokesman.

But how many officials are it really needed to keep the state going? The civil servant association warns that around 1.4 million employees in the public service would retire in the next ten years. This number could not be compensated for. The greatest need for teachers (115,000), health and elderly care (120,600) and in the local administrations (108,500).

Not surprisingly that taxpayers Holznagel considers the number of 600,000 missing employees to be unplausible: “Is it really necessary to continue this apparatus in this way? Many of these tasks could be simplified by digital functions.”