Part-time work: the hidden engine of Germany’s economy

Why axing the legal right to part-time work could actually cause more people in Germany to leave the labour force that contribute to it.

The first time a colleague in Germany wished me a guten Feierabend — literally, a “good celebration evening” — I wondered what festivities he had in mind. I later laughed at my own misunderstanding. He was referring to something far more ordinary, and far more cherished: the moment work ends, and free time begins.

The Feierabend — which might begin at eight in the morning for a night nurse or at two in the afternoon for a primary school teacher — has become one of Germany’s greatest emblems of work-life balance. When you’re off, you’re off.

That boundary is taken seriously. When you’re sick, you stay home, rather than sniffling into tissues at your desk to demonstrate devotion, à la America or Britain. Employers encourage workers to take substantial stretches of their legally mandated holiday — not just a few scattered days — to properly rest and reset. And around 40 percent of employees now work fewer than 40 hours a week, for reasons ranging from childcare and education to simply wanting to check off more chores on a Friday afternoon.

To many Germans, this looks like a humane and rational way of organising work. To parts of the political class, it appears to be a problem.

Recently the centre-right CDU has reignited a debate over whether Germans are working enough at all. Some party figures have called for an end to the legal right to part-time work, dismissively branding it “Lifestyle-Teilzeit” — part-time as a lifestyle choice. Germany’s strained pension system, they argue, could be shored up if workers would simply “work more and, above all, more efficiently again,” as Chancellor Friedrich Merz notoriously put it.

The diagnosis is not entirely wrong. Germany does face serious structural challenges: fewer workers are supporting more retirees, economic growth has stagnated, and fiscal room for generous social policies is narrowing as the state funnels more money into defence and infrastructure. But a proposed cure — rolling back part-time work — misunderstands both why Germans work fewer hours and how the labour market actually functions.