IW study: Longer working days are no health risk

Cologne. According to a study, long working hours do not pose an increased health risk for office workers. "Those who work more than ten hours a day do not report exhaustion or other stress symptoms significantly more often than those with shorter working days," according to the analysis by the employer-friendly Cologne Institute for Economic Research (IW), which was obtained by the German Press Agency and initially reported on by "Welt am Sonntag."

"Especially for office workers, there is certainly scope for flexibility – without negative consequences," write the study authors, referring to the federal government's planned reform of the Working Hours Act. The CDU/CSU and SPD had announced that, in accordance with the European Working Time Directive, they would introduce the possibility of a weekly rather than a daily maximum working time in the Working Hours Act. According to the law, working hours on a working day may not generally exceed eight hours.

"Where longer daily working hours are voluntarily accepted, this does not affect job satisfaction," the study states. No systematic negative abnormalities in the work experience were observed with very long daily working hours – such as lower job satisfaction, greater exhaustion, or reduced work capacity. According to the IW, longer working days, potentially exceeding ten hours, did not have a negative impact on office workers' self-assessed general health or the number of sick days they were absent from work.

The IW's analysis was based on a working time survey conducted by the Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (BAuA) in 2021—the most recent available survey year—of more than 8,600 office workers. The authors make it clear that their results apply to people with office jobs. However, they note: "Not every job is suitable for longer working hours—for safety and health reasons alone. But in office jobs, one can dare to be more flexible."

Trade unions are up in arms against the abandonment of the eight-hour day, which has been standard since 1918. An analysis by the Hugo Sinzheimer Institute for Labor Law (HSI) of the Hans Böckler Foundation, which is close to the trade unions, came to a different conclusion than the IW: "Occupational medicine has long proven that working hours of more than eight hours are a health risk," the HSI paper states.

RND/dpa