Lifetime working time

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The working life is the sum of the time that a person spends in gainful employment, measured in years. As a rule, the beginning of the working life is considered to be the time at which the person concerned begins their first gainful employment; the end of the period is determined to be the point in time at which the person retires (or early retirement), at which they become unable to work or at which point they finally leave working life for other reasons. The gross working life determined by the difference between the two points in time is shortened by military service , war years , unpaid training , studies , raising children , unemployment , etc. By subtracting the corresponding times from the gross working life, you can calculate the net working life .

Relevance of length of working life

The length of the working life of an “individual” person affects the level of his lifetime income and his old-age income. The relationship between the average net working life and average life expectancy in a country is of economic importance . The lower the proportion of “normal workers” (i.e. full-time workers) in relation to the total number of persons in employment in a country, the more important is the length of annual working hours in this country for the possibility of financing transfer payments . The development of average labor productivity in the country in question is also important here.

Development of human capital

According to a study published in 2004, the amount of human capital accumulated in Germany will no longer increase from 2050 for demographic reasons, since then not enough young people will form new human capital and the loss in value of the existing human capital due to its obsolescence will no longer be compensated. An example of this loss of value is the decline in market demand for the ability to write shorthand . It is all the more important to increase the degree of utilization of the human capital that is still available. This is only possible through longer working hours, especially for those workers who have a high level of individual human capital.

The degree to which a person's human capital is exhausted is reduced not only through late entry into the workforce or early retirement, but also through part-time work, unemployment or voluntary inactivity between the ages of 20 and 65.

Significance of working life in German pension law

The working life is an important factor when calculating pension entitlements . Missing years of gainful employment have a negative impact on the amount of pension entitlements, as do years in the course of the working life in which the person concerned was employed part-time . When calculating entitlements to a statutory pension in Germany, only periods are taken into account in which contributions were made to the statutory pension insurance.

In the public service of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia , for example, reducing the length of service to half of normal working hours over a period of six years affects the level of the civil servant's pension as if the part-time employee had been employed three years less. There are similar calculation methods in other areas of the public service in Germany.

Development of length of working life

Germany

In 2001 Peter Hartz sums up : “With a life expectancy of 700,000 hours or 80 years and 40 years of work with less than 1,500 hours of annual working time, the proportion of gainful employment in life falls below ten percent.” Hartz's statement on annual working hours obviously includes part-time workers. If this is taken into account, the average employee was employed for 1,470.8 hours per year in 2000 (in 1970 the corresponding figure for the Federal Republic of Germany was 1,966.4 hours). However, anyone who does not work full-time, ie is not considered to be a “normal worker”, is usually billed for the reduction in working hours in the form of reduced income and pension entitlements.

The average annual working time for normal workers in Germany was 1,656.3 hours. The length of the average annual working hours of “normal workers” has not changed significantly until 2012 (1,655.5 hours). Productivity per employee working hour increased by around 14 percent between 2000 and 2012.

Taking into consideration in addition to the part-time workers and part-time jobs , so the average annual working time has decreased from dependent employment in the period between 1991 and 2007 from 1478.8 to 1353.5 hours, notably in the part-time effect that from 155.4 to 354 , Has increased 4 hours per year.

According to Steffen Lehndorff, knowledge-based production and services encourage companies to have a strong interest in long working hours: the more "intellectual abilities" a company has, the more it will push - analogous to machines - for the longest possible "operating times" for these systems, although hardly any changing annual working hours for full-time employees and the tendency to increase in part-time employment, the length of working life becomes of decisive importance. It is therefore seen as problematic that in Germany, especially well-educated people start their job very late and thus participate very late in the productive value creation of the national economy. According to a study by the IW from 2006, university graduates only start their careers at the age of 28. In connection with early retirement and an expensive training system, experts believe that Germany lags behind other countries in terms of productive working life. In order to bring the age of entry forward to work, courses at universities are to be streamlined (as part of the Bologna process ) and high school students will already take the Abitur after eight years of school attendance . The suspension of compulsory military service enables young men to enter working life earlier.

In 2010, Raimund Becker , board member of the Federal Employment Agency , spoke out in favor of abolishing all incentives for early retirement. This includes extending the duration of unemployment benefits as well as partial retirement. It is important to keep people in the company longer. This also includes a later retirement age . The European Commission recommends linking the statutory retirement age in a member state of the EU to the average life expectancy in that country, a proposal that would lead to a constant automatic increase in the retirement age (provided that the average population continues to get older).

Other industrialized countries

Today it is assumed that the working life will be extended again after a shortening. This is due to the age structure of the population.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Lifetime working time models, flexible . www.daswirtschaftslexikon.com
  2. ↑ Peer Ederer / Philipp Schuller / Stephan Willms: Human capital as an economic and location factor. In: Martina Dürndorfer / Peter Friederichs (eds.): Human Capital Leadership. Hamburg, Murmann Verlag 2004, p. 183.
  3. ↑ Diagram of the utilization of human capital in the population aged 20 to 65 years. In: Statistisches Bundesamt / Westfälische Hochschule: The human capital of the population with a migration background ( Memento from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 1.1 MB) November 19, 2012, p. 20.
  4. ↑ State Office for Remuneration and Supply North Rhine-Westphalia: Leave of absence and civil service provision ( Memento from May 3, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  5. ^ Frankfurter Rundschau, October 18, 2001; quoted from: Steffen Lehndorff: Political prerequisites for an individual organization of the working life , in: Always more flexible - always more! On the way to time sovereignty? ( Memento of January 8, 2013 in the Internet Archive ). Documentation of the working time conference, Fulda November 2002, p. 148
  6. ↑ Federal Agency for Political Education: Working hours. Hours worked per person in employment per year, productivity per hour in employment, 1970–2012 . July, 1st 2013
  7. ↑ Federal Ministry of the Interior: Calculation method for determining the annual working time in the Federal Republic of Germany . October 8, 2019
  8. ↑ Hans Böckler Foundation / WSI Archive: Annual working time 1990 to 2012 (in hours)
  9. ↑ Federal Agency for Political Education: Working hours. Hours worked per person in employment per year, productivity per hour in employment, 1970–2012 . July, 1st 2013
  10. ↑ Federal Agency for Civic Education: Average annual working hours and their components in Germany (PDF; 66 kB). Original source: IAB Forum 2/2008, p. 30
  11. ↑ Steffen Lehndorff: Political prerequisites for an individual organization of the working life , in: Always more flexible - always more! On the way to time sovereignty? ( Memento of January 8, 2013 in the Internet Archive ). Documentation of the working time conference, Fulda November 2002, p. 146f.
  12. ^ Liberals and Federal Agency against Early Retirement . Berliner Morgenpost , September 13, 2010
  13. ↑ Florian Eder: Brussels wants Europeans to work longer . Die Welt , February 9, 2012