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Part-time work is becoming the new normal
In the second quarter of 2025 the part-time rate rose to 40.1% for the first time. That is an all-time high. Compared with the previous year, that means:
- + 1.3% more part-time staff
- - 0.7% fewer full-time employees
- Declining numbers of mini-jobs
- In total: 17 million people work part-time
So one thing is clear: part-time work is no longer a niche model but everyday reality - right across all industries.
Employment is rising, but the hours worked are falling
Although the number of people in work rose slightly to 46 million, the total volume of work fell by 0.5% to 14.5 billion hours. The reason: not everyone in work today works the same amount and many factors shorten or lengthen working hours. They include, for example:
- Order books: When the economy is doing badly, people often work less (through short-time work, for instance).
- Peak periods: In good phases there is more work and therefore overtime.
- Vacation, illness, public holidays: They reduce the target hours for the year.
- Part-time models: More and more people work fewer hours per week.
- Second jobs: The hours worked are spread across several jobs.
Second jobs continue to increase
In the second quarter of 2025, 4.65 million employees held a second job. That is an increase of 2.5% on the previous year. Per person, 7.4 hours were worked in second jobs, likewise an increase. For companies that means:
- People with more than one job have more complex working time profiles
- The boundaries between jobs have to be clearly traceable
- Documentation becomes more important in order to avoid overwork or miscalculations
Why these developments make digital tools indispensable
The figures show it very clearly: the world of work is becoming more granular, more flexible and more individual. With classic timesheets and Excel lists, this complexity can hardly be captured reliably any more. And this is exactly where clockin comes in.
Companies today face challenges such as:
- different part-time models
- changing places of work
- seasonal fluctuations
- several jobs per person
- unpredictable overtime
Digital time tracking makes sure that, despite all this variety, everything is documented cleanly, transparently and in a legally compliant way, without meaning extra work for employees or administration.
clockin supports in particular:
- flexible working time models (full-time, part-time, shift-based or project-based)
- clean absence management
- automatic hours reports for payroll accounting
- documented overtime and working time accounts
- mobile use from anywhere
A tool like clockin therefore helps you absorb exactly the trends that the IAB data is making increasingly visible.
Conclusion
The German working time landscape is changing fast: more part-time work, more second jobs, less overtime and a lower volume of work overall. For companies that means more variety, but also more administrative effort.
Anyone who records their working hours digitally, automatically and digitally today stays able to act - no matter how flexibly teams work.
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