In response, Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Germans need to work harder to make the economy more productive, as it hasn’t grown much in the past five years.
“We must, in this country, work more again and, above all, more efficiently,” he said in May. “It is not with the four-day work week and ‘work-life balance’ that we will be able to maintain our prosperity!”
Across Europe, the average number of hours worked by full-time employees in their main job was 36 hours in 2024, according to Eurostat. The U.K. and France track along that average, with both hitting about 36 hours.
Merz, for his part, would like to abolish this daily working limit while still maintaining the 40-hour workweek, allowing working days to become more flexible. Others want to encourage people of retirement age, 67 and above, to continue working and earn up to €2,000 per month, tax-exempt, thereby encouraging more people to stay working for longer.
Another issue across Europe, more generally, is that people are retiring earlier, citing burnout and general exhaustion, a trend affecting the entire working population. In fact, unions are focusing less on wage increases and more on gaining more time off from work.
All of this suggests it might be an uphill battle to bring people back into the labor market. However, with an aging workforce and economic stagnation, the balance between work hours and productivity remains a critical issue; it has never been more important to determine the difference between who works the most, the best, or the most efficiently.
