On 13 May 2025, Friedrich Merz, the German Chancellor, stated in a speech at the Economic Council, an economic policy federal association that is close to his party, the CDU, that “We need to work more and above all, more efficiently in this country again. With a four-day work week and a focus on work-life balance, we will not be able to maintain our nation’s prosperity”. (Minute 14:30) This statement is mostly false.
In his speech, Friedrich Merz did not explicitly refer to a specific study. However, his claim that Germans work fewer hours than people in other European countries closely aligns with the findings of a study published by the German Economic Institute (IWKöln), which is an established scientific research institute for economy. Their study shows that in an international comparison employees work significantly less hours than in other countries in Europe. Their data, which relies on data from the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), shows that the average German employee aged 15 to 64 worked 1.036 hours in 2023. Compared to the Czech Republic with 1.326 hours per citizen aged 15-64, that’s significantly less.
However, raw comparisons of annual working hours can be misleading if not interpreted in context. In Germany the part-time employment rate is higher than in other countries like Czech Republic with 7.5 % or Poland with 5.5 %, especially among women. According to the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis), 50% of women and 13% of men worked part-time in 2023 in Germany. Overall, around 31% of all employees worked part-time in Germany. Due to that, the volume of total hours worked shrinks, because it is calculated by multiplying the number of workers with average hours worked per person. But because part-time employees only work around 20 hours per week, which makes 1.000 hours per year in comparison to a full-time employee, who works around 2.000 hours per year, the number of total hours worked shrinks. If the number of workers stays the same, but more and more people work part-time, then the number of total hours worked gets smaller.
Calculation logic: 1.000 h/year for part-time vs. 2.000 h/year for full-time employees.
Labour market expert Holger Schäfer of the German Economic Institute explains: “It’s not due to laziness. In Germany, it’s simply not attractive enough to work longer hours. That’s mainly due to factors like high tax burdens. And often, people aren’t even able to increase their working time, for example, due to a lack of childcare infrastructure.” (Interview with Deutschlandfunk, May 2025, Minute: 1:46)
According to the IW, though the number of employed people in Germany is at an all-time high with 46 million, the annual working hours are already and will most likely decrease significantly by 2036, when the generation of the Babyboomer retire. While the annual working hours are already increasing in other countries, in Germany they will drop due to the fact, that there will be less people to replace the retirees. These changes might have economic consequences, if not substituted through increased productivity. That makes it necessary for the German politics to change basic conditions right now, like decreasing the high tax load to make full-time work more attractive and also offering enough childcare options for working parents to avoid this problem.
The myth of the four-day work week
In the last few years, a four-day work week has been a pilot project in many European countries, to find out the benefits of it. In his speech Merz says that, even though a lot of German citizens demand it, the four-day work week is not something that the country can afford to keep its prosperity. However, countries like the UK, who have already tried to implement the concept in a few companies with a few thousand participants, reported of increased productivity, less sick days and overall improved well-being of employees, which ultimately leads to better functioning businesses. In Germany there also have been a few studies from universities with the result of positive effects on satisfaction and recruitment of new employees. These are the possibilities of a four-day work week, but there is also an important point, on the contrary, to consider. According to the Institute for Employment Research (IAB), a company would have to improve their productivity by 25 % for the four-day work week to be profitable. For most companies, such an outcome is not realistic. Further studies are needed to determine how a four-day work week can be designed effectively.
Conclusion
The statement from Friedrich Merz is over generalized, exaggerated and partially refuted. It is not that the German workers are lazier than workers in other EU-countries, but it’s more about different structural factors, like demographic or the compatibility of work and family. The study from the German Economic Institute (IWKöln) is indeed right, but it cannot be used to compare the number of hours worked in a year between countries. However, it is true that the German economy is under a lot of pressure because of the shortage of skilled labor and that a lot of workers in important jobs are retiring and new workers are in need. But saying the concept of a four-day work week would threaten the prosperity of the country is a generalized statement that is false. According to Holger Schäfer, political action is necessary to create incentives for people to stay in the workforce longer and retire later. (Minute 6:30, Deutschlandfunk interview)
RESEARCH | ARTICLE © Nicola Harrer | Hochschule der Medien, Stuttgart , Germany
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