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Women's power in Germany: High part-time quota strengthens employment!
Yvonne Lott explains the high employment rate in Germany and calls for a better balance between work and family.
Women's power in Germany: High part-time quota strengthens employment!
In Germany, the current employment rate is remarkably high, especially for women. Yvonne Lott, a working time expert at the Hans Böckler Foundation, emphasizes in a recent analysis that this development can be seen as positive. She recommends that the federal government focus on improving the compatibility of work and family life. Innovative working time models that support predictable and moderate daily working hours could help here. However, Lott is critical of the revised plans to abolish maximum daily working hours, as these could make it significantly more difficult for people with care obligations to participate in the employment market. According to bietigheimerzeitung.de, the part-time rate in Germany is high compared to other EU countries at 28.5%, which is 28.5% 3 within the European Union means.
This high part-time rate raises many questions, especially in times of increasing skills shortages. Given employers' growing demands for longer working hours, the average weekly working time for 20 to 64 year olds in Germany is 35.1 hours. This puts Germany below the EU average of 37.1 hours. While the highest average weekly working hours are recorded in Greece at 40.9 hours, the lowest is in the Netherlands at 33.1 hours, which is due to the high part-time rate there, which is 39%, according to destatis.de.
Development of working hours in the EU
The analysis also shows that between 2013 and 2023, the average working time of part-time workers in the EU increased from 20.9 to 22.5 hours, while that of full-time workers fell from 41.3 to 40.4 hours over the same period. When looking at gender differences, the average weekly working time for full-time working men in the EU has increased to 41.2 hours and for women to 39.4 hours. In Germany, men work an average of 40.8 hours and women 39.1 hours.
The situation of young workers is also particularly striking. 15- to 24-year-olds in the EU worked an average of just 16.0 hours per week, although the figure in Germany is even lower at 13.9 hours. Part-time working men and women in Germany work 21.3 and 22.3 hours respectively, while the EU averages are 22.1 hours for men and 22.6 hours for women.
Smart solutions are needed to meet the challenges on the labor market. The government should think about sustainable and future-oriented working time models in order to promote employment in Germany and proactively address the challenges posed by the shortage of skilled workers. These considerations are crucial for a positive development in the German labor market, especially with regard to the greater integration of women into paid work and the creation of a more family-friendly working world.