The weekly working day in Germany is a slippery concept, since the official average is greatly influenced by the high proportion of part-time workers. Thus, in 2022 the working day of full-time workers was 40.4 hours, while that of part-time workers was 20.8 hours. According to the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis), the average working week, after introducing other scales, was 34.7 hours last year, below the European average of 37 hours.
The key issue, beyond the official number of hours, is that in Germany, except in very specific cases in some sectors, employees arrive at their workplace on time, complete their working hours and leave, without anyone giving them a bad look for Do not stay longer in the factory or office.
In Germany, where there is a labor shortage in almost all professions, there are more and more people working part-time, especially women. According to Destatis, there are 27.2 million full-time workers, and 11.8 million part-time workers, when in 2010 the latter were about 9.1 million. Also more and more people over 67 years of age, officially retired, continue working to round out their pension; It is estimated that there are one million.
In this context, there is also an initiative in Germany to test the reduction of the working day to four days. The metallurgical union IG Metall proposes the four-day week for the sector, and the University of Münster will coordinate a pilot study to evaluate whether it is feasible in this and other economic areas.
The system is called 100-80-100, because it seeks to maintain employees’ salaries at 100%, reduce the working day to 80% and achieve 100% productivity, that is, equal workload with shorter working hours. The study will last six months, between February and August 2024, and about 50 German companies have signed up to participate. Many experts believe that the four-day day is suitable for large companies, as they consider that in SMEs it could affect competitiveness.
