PHOTO Credit: Destatis
Wiesbaden, 9 December 2025
The coming year, 2026, will be less employee-friendly than 2025 in terms of the number of working day, says the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis).
Nationwide, there will be an average of 250.5 working days in 2026, 2.4 days more than in the current year.
The main reason, according to Destatis for the increase is that public holidays such as October 3 (German Unity Day) and December 26 fall on weekends in 2026.
Because the number of public holidays varies from state to state, the nationwide average for the number of working days is expressed with one decimal point.
According to the Destatis, the number of working days has an impact on economic output, adding that as a rule of thumb for the development of the gross domestic product (GDP), one additional working day leads, on average, to a GDP increase of approximately 0.1 percentage points.
“The actual effect can differ, however, partly because the economic significance of an additional workday varies depending on its position in the year,” says the statistical office.
Between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Day, economic activity in many sectors is largely at a standstill anyway. An additional workday then has less impact on GDP than if May 1st or October 3rd falls on a weekend.
An average of 250.5 workdays is the highest value since 2022, when the average was 251.4 workdays. Since German reunification, the most workdays were recorded in 2004 with an average of 252.8 days, and the fewest in 1991 with 246.9 days. In 1995, the Day of Repentance and Prayer was abolished as a public holiday in all German states except Saxony – this led to an overall increase in the number of workdays.