Last week, a query from Germany’s Left Party prompted the Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs to release new data on the weekly working hours of employees. According to the ministry’s responses, a large share of German workers have been putting in more than forty hours a week for some time.
In 2023, 48.4 percent of employees reported working a real weekly total between 40 and 48 hours. For comparison, in 2021 this figure was 47.5 percent, indicating that the proportion of longer‑hour workers has grown. An additional 10.5 percent worked more than 48 hours a week. Men were more likely than women to fall into this over‑long‑work category-14.1 percent of male workers and 6.3 percent of female workers, according to figures from the German Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (BAuA).
At the same time, a majority of workers expressed a desire to cut back on their hours: 56.5 percent said they would prefer to reduce their actual working time, the highest proportion recorded in the BAuA’s long‑running statistics, which go back to 2015. Only 7.9 percent reported wanting to work longer hours.
In response to these findings, Anne Zerr, a member of the Bundestag for the Left and spokesperson for labour and working‑time policy, said that Chancellor Olaf Merz’s push to extend working hours is a “political distraction manoeuvre”. She accused Merz of offering simplistic explanations that shift blame onto workers rather than addressing the underlying structural causes of Germany’s economic problems. “This mistrust toward those who keep our society running is unacceptable” Zerr added.
