In order to plug the deep corona holes in the public coffers, the Institute of German Economy is calling for a joint effort.
Cologne - “Now people are spitting on their hands again.
We are increasing the gross national product. ”The Institut der deutschen Wirtschaft (IW) is reflecting on the former number 1 hit and, in the middle of the vacation season, is suggesting a radical study: Germans should work more and take less vacation.
Background: The corona pandemic stopped the “golden decade” on the German labor market.
Since the financial crisis, the debt ratio - the ratio between national debt and economic output - has fallen from 80 percent to below 60 percent.
This trend was stopped at the beginning of 2020: In the first Corona year, the gross domestic product (GDP) collapsed by almost five percent, the number of people in employment shrank by more than one percent and the volume of work fell by 4.7 percent.
New study: Germany works too little - Switzerland as a diligent model
There are two possible approaches to filling the deep holes in the public coffers.
The first: more taxes.
The second, and that the institute close to the employer has now examined more closely: work more.
From a comparison of countries in Switzerland and Sweden, the IW derives a plea for longer working hours and fewer days off.
In Germany, employees work an average of around 34 hours a week and have 31 days of vacation per year.
Swiss employees, on the other hand, work 36 hours a week with 25 vacation days.
If you transfer the Swiss weekly working hours and the annual working weeks to the German labor market model, there would be a potential of 7.7 billion hours, explains the IW.
That in turn will increase GDP by six percent within ten years.
More work, less vacation: the study focuses primarily on women
“The main lever lies in the working hours,” explain the authors of the study.
The potential can be exploited, among other things, by reducing involuntary part-time work or by aligning the weekly working hours of women with those of men.
However, this requires improved framework conditions: “For example, many women involuntarily work part-time because there are no daycare places.
There is a shortage of 340,000 childcare places for the under-three year olds alone.
These omissions from the past decades are now costing us dearly.
In order to cope with the consequences of the crisis, we all have to lend a hand, ”explains Prof. Michael Hüther from the IW to
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Prof. Lars Feld, the former head of the economy, doubts the advance of the IW. The need for a work-life balance would rather lead people to switch to part-time work. "I am most likely to rely on innovation to increase prosperity," Feld told
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. FDP parliamentary group vice Michael Theurer is also skeptical: “Higher weekly working hours do not automatically lead to higher productivity.” He suggests more flexible working hours and individual agreements in the companies.