Germany's ongoing skilled worker shortage has reignited the debate around extending working hours. The Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) has released preliminary results from the 2025 Microcensus, offering a detailed look at how weekly working hours have changed across different groups of employees over the past decade. The findings reveal a complex picture of declining full-time hours, rising part-time engagement, and deep structural differences between men and women in the labour market.
Full-time employees in dependent employment averaged 39.9 hours per week in 2025, down from 40.5 hours in 2015. Compared to 2024, the figure remained unchanged. The gradual decline over the past decade raises important questions about labour supply and working time policies at a time when many industries across the country are struggling to fill vacancies. With calls to increase weekly hours growing louder, the data provides an essential baseline for the ongoing policy discussion.
Part-time employees, on the other hand, are putting in more hours than before. Their weekly average rose to 21.3 hours in 2025, up from 19.3 hours a decade earlier — an increase of 2.0 hours. The year-on-year change was minimal, with a gain of just 0.1 hours over 2024. Across all dependent employees, the combined weekly average stood at 34.0 hours in 2025. That is 0.4 hours less than in 2015 and unchanged compared to the previous year, suggesting that the overall trend has largely stabilised.
The gender divide in part-time work remains one of the most striking features of Germany's labour market. In 2025, 31.9 percent of all dependent employees worked part-time. Among women, the rate reached 50.6 percent, while only 14.3 percent of men held part-time positions, both figures representing new all-time highs.
The gap has narrowed slightly since 2015, when the rates were 48.0 percent for women and 10.6 percent for men, as the male part-time rate has grown at a comparatively faster pace.
Among employed parents aged 25 to 49, the disparity is even more pronounced. In 2025, 66.4 percent of mothers with children under 18 worked part-time, compared to just 8.6 percent of fathers, making mothers roughly eight times more likely to reduce their hours.
The age of the children had little influence on this pattern, though mothers of younger children were less likely to be employed at all. Even among those without children, 24.8 percent of women in this age group worked part-time, roughly double the rate for men at 12.3 percent.
Part-time employment rises sharply in the later stages of a career. At age 55, the part-time rate was 30.6 percent, still below the national average. By 60 it climbed to 33.5 percent, crossing that threshold. Among 65-year-olds still in employment, more than half (53.4 percent) had reduced their hours.
For those continuing to work well beyond the statutory retirement age, the trend accelerated further, with the part-time rate reaching 90.3 percent at age 70. This pattern holds for both women and men, though women consistently record higher part-time rates across every age group.
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