The Big Lie About Working Hours

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How Politicians Distort Statistics to Push a Political Agenda

Chancellor Merz, Vice Chancellor Klingbeil, and Minister President Kretschmann all claim in unison: People in Germany don’t work hard enough. The figures they cite, however, tell a different story—or rather, they are presented in such a way as to tell a specific story.

The Narrative and Its Goal

“Overall, our economy’s productivity is not high enough. With work-life balance and a four-day workweek, we will not be able to maintain the prosperity our country enjoys today in the future—and that is why we must work more.” This is what Federal Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) said in January 2026 at the New Year’s reception of the Halle-Dessau Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Federal Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil (SPD) echoed this sentiment in March 2026 at the Bertelsmann Foundation: “As a society, we will have to work more overall.” And Winfried Kretschmann, the long-serving Green Party Minister-President of Baden-Württemberg, echoed this sentiment as early as the spring of 2025: “We have to work more. The idea that we want to work less during a crisis, of all times, is completely out of step with the times.”

These statements are no coincidence. They are laying the groundwork for two specific policy initiatives:

  1. The abolition of the maximum daily working hours limit (eight hours according to the Working Hours Act) in favor of a maximum weekly working hours limit—already agreed upon in the coalition agreement.
  2. The extension of the working life through a later retirement age, restrictions on retirement at age 63, and incentives to work beyond retirement age.

The narrative goes like this: Germans are slacking off, and that is why the economy is struggling. Anyone who accepts this premise also accepts the political conclusions. But the premise is false—and the statistics used are methodologically manipulated to such an extent that it is no exaggeration to call it a deception of the public.

The Statistical Trick: A New Metric Creates a New Problem

The Starting Point: What the OECD Really Measures

The political debate began with an “IW News” report published in May 2025 by the employer-friendly Institute of German Economy (IW Cologne). Under the catchy headline “Greeks Work 135 Hours More Per Year Than Germans”, IW labor market expert Holger Schäfer claimed that Germany ranked third from the bottom in an OECD comparison.

This figure immediately spread through all media outlets, was featured as the lead story on ARD’s Tagesthemen, and was cited by Chancellor Merz as evidence for his assessment.

What’s the story behind this?

The OECD collects data on working hours. The original data source defines this as: “Hours worked per employed person”—that is, the total number of hours actually worked divided by the number of employed people. According to this metric, Germany will reach 1,335 hours per employed person in 2023.

The IW, however, calculated its own metric: “Hours worked per resident of working age (15 to 64 years)” — that is, the total hours worked divided by the total resident population between the ages of 15 and 64, regardless of whether these people are employed or not. According to this metric, Germany comes in at only 1,036 hours—and ranks third from the bottom.

The difference between the two metrics: nearly 30 percent.

The RWI Essen explicitly addressed this methodological shift in August 2025 as the “Unstatistic of the Month” and classified it as misleading. A detailed analysis of the shift in the key figures can also be found on the blog “Aktuelle Sozialpolitik” by Prof. Stefan Sell (August 1, 2025).

Why this difference is so large—and so crucial

The IW indicator does not measure how much working people in Germany work. It measures how much the entire working-age population works on average—including all people who are unemployed, in training, raising children, caring for relatives, or not in the workforce for other reasons.

That sounds like a useful addition. But it’s a trap: This indicator depends crucially on a country’s labor force participation rate and part-time employment rate—and this is precisely where Germany has structural characteristics that have nothing to do with “laziness.”

Sample calculation for illustration:

Let’s imagine two fictional countries—Country A (similar to Germany) and Country B (similar to Poland)—each with 1,000 working-age residents:

Country A Country B
Employed 770 (77%) 690 (69%)
Of whom part-time 30% → 231 people 6% → 41 people
Full-time hours/year 1,600 h 1,600 h
Part-time hours/year 800 h 800 h
Total hours 539 × 1,600 + 231 × 800 = 1,047,200 h 649 × 1,600 + 41 × 800 = 1,071,200 h
Hours per resident (IW method) 1,047 hours 1,071 hours
Hours per employed person (OECD method) 1,360 hours 1,552 hours

 

The result: Country A has a higher labor force participation rate (77% versus 69%), but because of its much higher part-time employment rate (30% versus 6%), it ranks just behind Country B in the IW index. Although more people are employed in Country A, they work fewer hours per person on average—because many of them are employed part-time.

This is exactly the reality in Germany:

The lower figure for “hours per capita” is therefore not a sign of laziness. It is the direct mathematical effect of the high female labor force participation rate, combined with a high proportion of part-time workers.

The disclaimer that no one mentions

One detail that has been completely ignored in the public debate is particularly revealing: The OECD itself includes an explicit disclaimer with its working hours data:

“The data are intended for comparisons of trends over time; they are unsuitable for comparisons of the level of average annual hours of work for a given year, because of differences in sources and methods of calculation.”

The data are unsuitable for cross-country comparisons based on absolute annual hours worked—due to differences in survey methods. Nevertheless, the IW analysis—and subsequently Chancellor Merz—used precisely this comparison as evidence.

The Part-Time Effect: Who actually works “too little”?

Women in the Part-Time Trap — But Why?

Nearly 49 percent of working women in Germany work part-time. This figure is exceptionally high by international standards.

Federal Minister of Labor Bärbel Bas (SPD) has aptly described this situation herself: There are women “who are involuntarily stuck in the part-time trap”. They want to work more but cannot do so due to a lack of childcare or family-unfriendly work models.

The political response to this, however, reveals a remarkable double standard:

On the one hand, the CDU/CSU have claimed for years (and have also enshrined this in the latest coalition agreement) that spousal income splitting is a family model worth protecting. This tax system rewards couples in which one partner—statistically, the woman—earns significantly less or nothing at all. It thus creates a tax incentive for women to work part-time.

On the other hand, the same politicians complain that too many women work part-time, thereby reducing the total volume of work.

This is not a contradiction that politicians fall into unconsciously. It is a political agenda: The part-time employment rate is defined as a problem—but the structural causes (lack of childcare options, misguided tax incentives, inadequate care infrastructure) are not treated as a priority. Instead, pressure on employees is increased.

What Full-Time Employees Really Contribute

If you want to make a fair comparison, you have to look at full-time employees. Here, the picture is different: Full-time employees in Germany work in the upper middle range in Europe—no less than in the countries used for comparison.

Furthermore, in 2023, more than 775 million hours of unpaid overtime were worked in Germany. Unpaid overtime is therefore a daily reality for millions of workers.

Care Work: The Invisible Work in Statistics

None of the political statements take into account a fundamental fact: On average, women in Germany perform 30 hours of unpaid care work per week childcare, elder care, and housework. This work does not appear in OECD statistics. It is socially necessary, economically indispensable—and statistically invisible.

When calculated as total work (paid work plus care work), women work an average of 45.5 hours per week, while men work 44.3 hours. Women therefore work more overall.

Anyone who calls for women to increase their paid working hours must explain who will take on the care work. Without an expansion of daycare spots, full-day schools, and long-term care facilities, “more paid work for women” simply means more work overall, while the share of care work remains the same.

Working Life: The Real Political Goal

Retirement at 63 and Early Retirement

A central part of the political narrative is the criticism of “retirement at 63.” Klingbeil said at the Bertelsmann Foundation: “Encouraging people to leave the workforce early is no longer an option.” (Euronews, March 25, 2026) Merz had already sent similar signals during the election campaign.

What is often overlooked: “Retirement at 63” applies only to people who can demonstrate 45 years of contributions—that is, to individuals who often began working as early as 17 or 18 and have been paying into the system their entire lives. Allowing these people to retire earlier is not a matter of perverse incentives, but of social justice.

The Working Hours Act and the Eight-Hour Day

The planned shift from a daily to a weekly maximum working time is the second political lever. The coalition agreement stipulates replacing the eight-hour day as a daily limit with a weekly maximum working time.

The claim that this promotes “flexibility” obscures an important point: Without a daily cap, in extreme cases workdays of over twelve hours are easily possible—theoretically up to 73.5 hours per week with six workdays per week.

Occupational health research is unequivocal: Very long daily working hours increase the risk of burnout, cardiovascular disease, and workplace accidents. According to the DGB’s “Good Work” Index 98 percent of employees already want daily working hours of less than ten hours.

What the Statistics Really Say: A Summary

Claim Facts
“Germany works the least” False as an absolute statement. Full-time employees work the European average. The low figure for “hours per capita” is a result of the high proportion of part-time workers.
“We work less than we used to” Partially true. Per-capita working hours have declined since the 1970s. The total volume of work, however, is at a historic high: over 61 billion hours (2024).
“Other countries are catching up” True for hours per capita. The reason: Countries like Greece and Spain have reduced their part-time employment rates following the euro crisis—not the total hours worked per person.
“The high rate of part-time work is a problem” Only if you ignore the causes. It is a consequence of a lack of child care, misguided tax incentives (spousal income splitting), and inadequate care infrastructure.
“Cross-country comparisons show: Germany ranks last” The OECD explicitly warns that its data is unsuitable for comparing levels across countries.

Conclusion: A Political Agenda Behind a Statistical Facade

The debate over working hours in Germany is not a sober analysis of a social problem. It is a politically driven campaign consisting of at least three elements:

First: The selection of a statistical metric (hours per working-age resident instead of per employed person) that systematically makes Germany look worse—despite explicit warnings from the OECD regarding the comparability of this data.

Second: The obscuring of the part-time effect. Many women work part-time because the structural conditions for full-time work are lacking. To construct this as evidence of a general unwillingness to work is factually incorrect.

Third: The rhetorical linking of both points to specific political goals—weakening the Working Hours Act and raising the retirement age—which are justified by the alleged data but are not statistically supported by it.

Merz knows exactly what he’s doing when he says: “There are no genetic differences” and then cites Switzerland as a model. This is a strategy of moral accusation: Germans are lazy, and anyone who doubts this is working against the country’s prosperity. This rhetoric shields the narrative from contradiction.

The truth is more uncomfortable and complicated: Germany has a productivity problem, an investment problem, and an infrastructure problem. These problems did not arise because people aren’t working hard enough. They arose because, for too long, there has been insufficient investment in education, digitalization, child care, and public infrastructure. Longer working hours will not solve any of them.

Sources

This article was created with the help of Claude AI. As usual, I'd be happy to discuss this post on the Fediverse.