Germany gained a reputation for being one of the most efficient labor markets with very high productivity. However, the successive crises of recent years they have shown their seams exposing their weaknesses.
The Government of Friedrich Merz wants to change the rules so that people are compensated for working more hours and stop depending on social assistance. Today, many Germans prefer to have a shorter working day, because if they work morethey lose benefits and end up earning the same or less.
Work more to earn less. In Germany, if someone with a low income receives a social benefit and accepts more hours of work, the authorities subtract that extra amount from their support salary. For example, someone who collects a subsidy (a Minimum Vital Income, for example), accepts a minijob (a part-time job of up to 600 euros per month that does not contribute to Social Security), the worker is left in a situation similar to the one he would have if he only collected the benefit without working.
This discourages the effort to get a full-time job, because the net money at the end of the month barely changes or even goes down. The commission of experts of the Ministry of Labor explains this phenomenon in his latest reportand proposes reducing the impact of income on aid so that working more always pays off financially.
Chancellor Merz was pronounced regarding the content of this report highlighting that “this report is the basis for all the additional reforms that we will carry out together in the coming years.”
Objective: promote full-time work. The Government proposes several concrete ideas to promote full-time work and reduce the negative impact of mini-jobs, which do not generate sufficient contributions for pensions or insurance and hinder the full-time job creation.
One of the proposals is to eliminate the exemptions for this type of precarious employment and raise those for jobs close to full-time to avoid “erroneous incentives.” “We want work to be worth it,” stood out Bärbel Bas, Federal Minister of Labor.
Without justified reason, there is no part-time work. The conservatives of the CDU, party of Chancellor Merz, they propose reduce the cases in which companies must accept requests for reduction of working hours.
Currently, any employee with more than six months’ seniority in a company with more than 15 workers can request reduced working hours without giving any reason and the company must accept it as long as there are no operational reasons that prevent it. It is what has been called “lifestyle” reduction“.
The Government raises the possibility of limiting this reduction only to justifiable cases, such as childcare or training, eliminating free use that slows down productivity.
The challenge of family conciliation. According to data According to the Federal Statistical Office and Eurostat, Germany has one of the shortest working hours in Europe and one of the highest rates of part time employment.
In 2024, 29% of the active population worked like this, but among womenthis day model reaches 50.3%, compared to 13.4% of men. That is to say, although many mothers would like to work full-time, the lack of daycare or support to care for children forces them to choose mini-jobs of about 18 hours a week on average.
This problem aggravates the labor shortage qualified, because it leaves almost half of employed women out of the full-time labor market. The reform aims to facilitate conciliation with more flexibility, but without reducing the pressure for more and more employees to go to work full time.
In Xataka | Germany believes it has found the most German possible solution to its productivity problems: work more
Image | Unsplash (Maheshkumar Painam, Spencer Davis)
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