Employees in Germany worked around 1.3 billion overtime hours in 2023. Of these, 775 million hours were unpaid.
This emerges from an answer from the Federal Ministry of Labor to a written question from left-wing MP Susanne Ferschl, which the “Rheinische Post” first reported on. The Ministry of Labor therefore relies on data from the Institute for Labor Market and Occupational Research (IAB) of the Federal Employment Agency (BA) from February 2024, which was available to the dpa.
Accordingly, the total overtime worked last year corresponded to the equivalent of 835,000 full-time positions. In 2023, each employee worked an average of 31.6 hours of overtime, 18.4 of which were unpaid. In 2022, employees still worked around 1.4 billion hours of overtime. This means that the overtime total in 2023 fell by around 100 million compared to the previous year.
Ferschl criticized: “Employers save billions in wage costs through unpaid overtime, while employees suffer from extended working hours and constant demands for flexibility.”