Occupational Safety and Health How Long Working Hours Harm Health

It’s a strange discussion: Although the total volume of working hours is at an all-time high—and although more hours have never been worked in a single year—there are currently calls for longer working hours: Chancellor Friedrich Merz has sparked a debate on working hours in Germany. People need to “work more again—and, above all, more efficiently.”

In its coalition agreement, the new federal government announces plans to introduce a weekly maximum working time instead of a daily one. A recent brief study by the Hugo Sinzheimer Institute for Labor Law (HSI) at the Hans Böckler Foundation shows that the federal government’s proposal would allow daily maximum working hours of over 12 hours. For employees, this is problematic in several respects.
 

Long working hours can make you sick

Occupational medicine has long established that long and excessively long working hours pose a risk to health. Excessively long working hours are associated with a wide range of health impairments. Exhaustion and sleep disorders occur more frequently, as do stress-related illnesses, cardiovascular diseases, and metabolic disorders.

Excessively long working hours are already widespread in Germany: A study by the DGB’s “Gute Arbeit” Index, which examined the extent and number of overtime hours worked, concluded as recently as this spring that around 10 percent of full-time employees already work more than 48 hours per week. This means nothing less than that roughly one in ten full-time employees has working hours that pose a serious health risk due to overtime.

The latest Working Hours Report, published by the Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (BAuA) in 2023, also presents clear findings: Long working hours, overtime, and reduced rest periods are often accompanied by deadline or performance pressure and by being overwhelmed by the workload. Such stresses, in turn—such as those caused by deadlines and performance pressure, or by working too much or for too long—lead to concrete, measurable health risks: They can make people sick—both physically and mentally.
 

The risk of accidents increases

In the long term, stress-related illnesses become more common, including both mental health issues—such as an increased incidence of burnout symptoms and states of physical and mental exhaustion—and physical illnesses, such as strokes, diabetes, and an increased risk of cancer. Furthermore, mental health conditions are increasingly the cause of absenteeism and early retirement. According to data from the DAK, the average duration of sick leave for mental health conditions was 33 days in 2023.

In addition to the higher risks of illness, occupational health findings also show a negative correlation between long workdays and workplace accidents. The risk of accidents increases exponentially after the eighth hour of work. After a 12-hour workday, the accident rate at work or during the subsequent drive home is twice as high as after an 8-hour workday. 

“The eight-hour workday is not an arbitrary figure, but a fixed benchmark for protecting health,” emphasizes Hans-Jürgen Urban, executive board member of IG Metall. If workdays become too long, the risk of accidents and burnout increases. The maximum daily working hours therefore mark a limit—based on findings from occupational science. “Nevertheless, it is already possible today to deviate from the maximum daily working hours, provided that the necessary recovery time is granted,” says Urban. “A maximum weekly working hours limit alone is unnecessary and poses a risk to employees’ health.”