Pension: IW boss calls for a 42-hour week instead of a higher entry age
Created: 06/03/2022, 10:24 am
42 hour week?
Michael Hüther, Director of the Institute of German Economics, is in favor of this.
© Michael Kappeler/dpa
Economic researcher Michael Hüther considers an increase in the retirement age to be politically difficult to implement.
Instead, he proposes a 42-hour week for workers.
Berlin – Demographic change is in full swing.
Do people in Germany now have to work longer before they can retire?
In the discussion about long-term declining income from pension insurance, economic researcher Michael Hüther has now made a proposal that goes completely in the opposite direction.
He advocates a 42-hour week as standard working time.
Pension: Economic researchers consider a higher retirement age to be difficult to implement
In contrast, the director of the employer-oriented Institute of German Economics (IW) considers raising the retirement age, which is usually discussed as a means of balancing the pension insurance system, to be politically difficult to implement, as he
told the newspapers of the
Funke media group .
“It takes the 42-hour week.
The hours are paid, of course - it's not about taking wage cuts through the back door," he explained.
In Switzerland, two hours more are worked per week than in Germany, and in Sweden one hour more.
"If you add that up, then by 2030 you would compensate for the demographically induced loss of workload."
Pension: Economists called for a higher entry age
Several economists had previously advocated raising the retirement age.
“The retirement age must rise.
Germany already has a huge problem with skilled workers, hundreds of thousands of jobs are unfilled," Leipzig economist Gunther Schnabl told
Bild
.
As a result, among other things, wages would have to rise sharply in the next few years and goods would become much more expensive.
"The mix of aging society, high levels of debt and energy transition will pose an increasing threat to price stability in the coming years," said the Vice President of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, Stefan Kooths, the newspaper.
More and more pensioners are faced with fewer and fewer employees.
This could lead to further increases in prices.
The Freiburg economist Bernd Raffelhüschen told the newspaper that the pension policy of the past few years, such as the introduction of the pension at 63, was financed "with more and more new debts".
He advocated linking retirement to increasing life expectancy.
(dpa)
