Women want to work more
Part-time quota in Germany is growing significantly
08/10/2023 11:54 am
Germany has a high number of employees. However, an increasing proportion of them work part-time. Women in particular are affected. Affected? Yes, because they actually want to work a lot more. However, there are numerous obstacles.
The number of part-time employees has increased in recent years – women in particular often work less than they actually want to. This emerges from the response of the federal government to a request from the Left parliamentary group in the Bundestag, about which the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” (SZ) reported. According to this, around 10.2 million people were working part-time in mid-2022, which is almost 30 percent of all employees subject to social security contributions.
There are also significantly more part-time employees than ten years ago: in 2012 the number was 7.3 million employees, which was almost 25 percent of the employees subject to social security contributions. The proportion of women working part-time grew from 44.4 percent in 2012 to 49.6 percent last year, and among men the proportion rose from 8.6 to 12.6 percent.
According to the “SZ” report, only around a quarter of part-time employees say they voluntarily work less than full-time. The main reasons for women are childcare (27.2 percent) and caring for people in need of care or people with disabilities (17 percent). A good five percent of the women stated that they could not find a full-time job.
The Ministry for Family Affairs only published a study in mid-July, according to which the need for childcare continues to exceed the available places. There is a supply gap in all age groups.