The Arbeitszeitgesetz (ArbZG), Germany’s Working Hours Act, caps the regular workday at eight hours, requires paid breaks after six, mandates 11 hours of rest between shifts, restricts night and Sunday work, and, since a 2022 Federal Labour Court ruling, obliges every employer to record the full daily working time of every employee. Fines run up to 30,000 euros per violation, and serious or repeated breaches can become criminal. Here is how each rule actually works.
Who the Law Covers
Section 2 of the ArbZG applies to all blue-collar and white-collar workers and to anyone in vocational training. If you have an employment contract in Germany, the law applies to you regardless of job title, pay level, or industry.
Section 18 removes a short list of people from the law entirely: senior executives as defined in Section 5(3) of the Works Constitution Act (plus chief physicians in hospitals), heads of public-service departments and their deputies, live-in caregivers who share a household with the people they look after, and people working within the liturgical sphere of churches and religious communities.1Gesetze im Internet. Arbeitszeitgesetz (ArbZG) 18 – Nichtanwendung des Gesetzes For those groups, the caps on hours, breaks, and rest periods simply do not apply. Everyone else is in.
Maximum Daily and Weekly Hours
Section 3 sets the ceiling. A regular workday may not exceed eight hours. It can stretch to ten, but only if the average across six calendar months or 24 weeks stays at or below eight hours per day.2Gesetze im Internet. Arbeitszeitgesetz (ArbZG) 3 – Arbeitszeit der Arbeitnehmer The averaging window gives employers room for seasonal peaks as long as lighter weeks pull the average back down.
The law counts Saturday as a normal working day, so the regular week contains six workable days. That produces a standard weekly maximum of 48 hours and a short-term ceiling of 60 hours during busy stretches. You will never legally owe more than 60 hours in a single week, and even that only works if the following weeks bring the six-month average back to eight hours a day.
Breaks During the Shift
Section 4 ties break entitlement to shift length. Work more than six hours and up to nine, and you are entitled to at least 30 minutes of total break time. Work more than nine hours, and the minimum rises to 45 minutes. Breaks can be split into smaller blocks, but each block must be at least 15 minutes. A quick pause at your desk does not count.
The law also draws a hard line at six consecutive hours: no one may work longer than that without a break. And breaks are not working time. An eight-hour workday with a 30-minute break means eight and a half hours of presence at the workplace.
Rest Between Shifts
Section 5 requires an uninterrupted rest period of at least 11 hours before your next shift begins. Clock out at 8 PM, and you cannot start again before 7 AM.
Some industries can shorten the rest period to 10 hours: hospitals, care facilities, restaurants, transport, broadcasting, and agriculture. The trade-off is that every shortened rest must be compensated with a correspondingly longer rest of at least 12 hours within the same calendar month or within four weeks. You lose an hour of rest now; you gain it back later.
Night Work
The ArbZG defines night time as the window between 11 PM and 6 AM. You qualify as a night worker if your schedule regularly includes night shifts on a rotating basis, or if you work at least 48 nights per calendar year.3Gesetze im Internet. Arbeitszeitgesetz (ArbZG) 2 – Begriffsbestimmungen Collective agreements can shift the start of the seven-hour night window to anywhere between 10 PM and midnight.4Gesetze im Internet. Arbeitszeitgesetz (ArbZG) 7 – Abweichende Regelungen
Section 6 keeps the eight-hour daily limit for night workers. Extensions to ten hours are allowed, but the employer must bring the average back to eight within one calendar month or four weeks, rather than the six months available for daytime work.
Night workers get specific medical protections. Before starting night work, and every three years after, you are entitled to a medical examination at your employer’s expense. Once you turn 50, the interval shrinks to once a year. If a doctor certifies that continued night work would harm your health, or if you have a child under twelve at home without another caregiver during night hours, you can request a transfer to a daytime position. Employers must also provide an appropriate supplement for night shifts, either through higher pay or compensatory time off.
On-Call Duty Versus On-Call Availability
German law splits standby work into two categories, and the difference reshapes your working-time totals.
On-call duty (Bereitschaftsdienst) requires you to be physically present at or near the workplace, ready to act immediately. Because you cannot use the time freely, every hour counts in full as working time. A doctor sleeping in the hospital on-call room at 2 AM is working, legally speaking.
On-call availability (Rufbereitschaft) is different. You only need to be reachable and can spend the time where you like. Only the minutes you actually spend working after being called in count. Idle hours are rest, though any call-in can restart the 11-hour rest clock if the remaining uninterrupted block falls short.
If your employer labels a shift as on-call availability but requires you to stay on-site or respond within minutes, the practical reality may push it into on-call duty, making every hour count toward your daily and weekly limits.
Sundays and Public Holidays
Section 9 bans work on Sundays and public holidays as a general rule. Section 10 lists the exceptions, and the list is long: emergency and rescue services, fire departments, hospitals, care facilities, restaurants and hotels, transport, energy and water utilities, broadcasting, security, agriculture, sports and entertainment venues, museums, and more.5Gesetze im Internet. Arbeitszeitgesetz (ArbZG) 10 – Sonn- und Feiertagsbeschaeftigung The common thread is work that cannot simply be moved to a weekday.
Section 11 requires a compensatory day off within two weeks for any Sunday worked, and within eight weeks for a public holiday worked on a weekday. Whatever your industry, at least 15 Sundays per calendar year must remain completely work-free.6Gesetze im Internet. Arbeitszeitgesetz (ArbZG) 11 – Ausgleich fuer Sonn- und Feiertagsbeschaeftigung
Where Collective Agreements Change the Rules
The ArbZG’s defaults are not always the numbers that govern your job. Section 7 lets collective bargaining agreements (Tarifverträge), and workplace agreements based on them, override several of them:
- Daily hours beyond ten, where shifts regularly include substantial standby or on-call duty.
- A different averaging window instead of the standard six months or 24 weeks.
- The 11-hour rest period cut by up to two hours if the work requires it and the lost rest is compensated within an agreed timeframe.
- Flexible break structures in shift operations and transport, with shorter and more frequent pauses of appropriate length.
- Adjusted night-work averaging, and daily hours above ten where standby is a regular part of the shift.
Check your applicable Tarifvertrag before assuming the statutory defaults are your actual limits.4Gesetze im Internet. Arbeitszeitgesetz (ArbZG) 7 – Abweichende Regelungen
Time Recording After the 2022 Ruling
The original text of Section 16 required employers to record only hours worked beyond the standard eight-hour day and to keep those records for at least two years.7Gesetze im Internet. Arbeitszeitgesetz (ArbZG) 16 – Aushang und Arbeitszeitnachweise Two court decisions changed that.
In May 2019, the European Court of Justice held in the CCOO case (C-55/18) that EU member states must require employers to maintain an objective, reliable, and accessible system for measuring each employee’s daily working time. In September 2022, Germany’s Federal Labour Court applied that reasoning at home. In case 1 ABR 22/21, the court held that Section 3(2)(1) of the Occupational Health and Safety Act (Arbeitsschutzgesetz), read in light of EU law, already obliges employers to record the start, end, and duration of daily working time for all employees, including overtime.8Das Bundesarbeitsgericht. BAG Entscheidung 1 ABR 22/21
So every employer in Germany must now track full daily working hours, not just the hours exceeding eight. The law does not prescribe a format. Paper logs, spreadsheets, and digital time-tracking software all qualify, provided the system is reliable and the records are accessible to regulators. Trust-based working time (Vertrauensarbeitszeit) is still possible: employees can decide when they start and stop, but the hours still have to be recorded.
The Federal Ministry of Labour presented a draft Arbeitszeiterfassungsgesetz in mid-2025 to codify the recording duty in a dedicated statute. As of early 2026, the draft was still being coordinated within the federal government and had not been enacted. Until it passes, the obligation rests on the court-established reading of existing occupational safety law, and employers without a recording system are already out of compliance.
Fines and Criminal Penalties
Section 22 treats most ArbZG violations as administrative offenses. Exceeding daily hour limits, skipping mandatory breaks, ignoring rest periods, or failing to keep time records can each draw fines of up to 30,000 euros.9Gesetze im Internet. Arbeitszeitgesetz (ArbZG) 22 – Busssgeldvorschriften Fines apply per violation, so a pattern across multiple employees adds up quickly.
Section 23 escalates from there. If an employer intentionally commits certain violations and thereby endangers a worker’s health or safety, or if the employer repeats violations despite prior sanctions, the offense becomes criminal. The penalty is imprisonment of up to one year or a monetary fine. Where the health risk was caused by negligence rather than intent, the maximum is six months’ imprisonment or a fine of up to 180 daily rates.10dejure.org. Arbeitszeitgesetz (ArbZG) 23 – Strafvorschriften Regulatory authorities can inspect time records at any time.11Customs online. Working Time