Actually, the weekends should be free of paid work – and serve people to relax. However, current figures show that for many Thuringians, working at the weekend is part of everyday life. The situation is different when working on public holidays.
Erfurt (dpa/th) – Hundreds of thousands of people in Thuringia also regularly work on weekends. Of the approximately 1.01 million people in employment in the Free State, almost 300,000 men and women regularly worked on Saturdays last year, according to the Thuringian Ministry of Social Affairs’ response to a parliamentary question from Left-wing MP Lena Saniye Güngör. This means that in 2021 about one in three employed people in Thuringia also had to go to work at the weekend.
Almost 150,000 people even worked regularly on Sundays. This corresponds to about every sixth Thuringian employee. In its reply, the Ministry refers to data provided by the State Office for Statistics based on the results of the microcensus.
According to the Ministry of Social Affairs, work is regularly carried out on weekends, but also in the evenings, especially in retail, when repairing motor vehicles and in health and social services. In addition, so-called atypical working hours – which also include working at night – are “particularly widespread” in warehousing and in the transport sector, among other things.
On the other hand, according to the information, for example in public administration or in the construction industry, people only rarely work outside of the usually daytime working hours from Monday to Friday.
On the other hand, the situation appears to be different with holiday work than with work on ordinary weekends. According to the response from the Ministry of Social Affairs to the MP, only about four percent of employed Thuringians worked on public holidays in 2021. In absolute numbers, this corresponds to around 45,000 people.
