Germany : a net rise in regular employment?

Is German growth creating only unstable jobs or is it leading to more regular employment? To this important question, which is often exploited for political ends, Germany’s federal statistics agency offers an optimistic answer. According to figures published on 10 October, the German economy is clearly producing more regular jobs than previously. The threshold of 70% of jobs being defined as regular – in other words an open-ended employment contract for at least 21 hours a week of work – was exceeded in 2018. Currently, 70.3% of all jobs in Germany qualify as regular and it is the first time since 2002 that this proportion has been reached. Over the last 15 years, the lowest point came in 2007, when only 65.4% of jobs were classified as regular. Between 2007 and 2018, nearly 90% of jobs that were created, approximately 4 million jobs, can be classified as regular. Over the same period, the share of non-regular jobs, such as temporary work and so-called mini-jobs fell from 22.6% (2007) to 20.1% (2018), while the proportion of jobs in the self-employed category fell from 11.1% to 9.3%.