Nearly four million of Germany‘s employed population – or 9.3% – work night shifts, according to the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis).
The data, from 2024, indicates that men are almost twice as likely as women to work nights, with 11.7% of men compared with 6.5% of women engaged in night shifts.
Night shifts are also more common among younger and middle-aged workers: 10.6% of employees up to age 34 and 9.6% aged 35–54 worked at least occasionally between 11 pm and 6 am, while only 7.4% of those 55 and older did so.
Sector by sector
The number of people working at night varies significantly by sector, the data shows. Aviation leads, with 42.6% of employees working at night, followed by security services and detective agencies (40.2%), and metal production and processing (31.1%). Other sectors with above-average levels of night work include warehousing and transportation services (18.6%), healthcare (17.6%), and food service (13.9%).
By contrast, night shifts are more rare in construction, building installation and finishing (1.8%), IT services (3.6%), and education (3.8%).
Destatis notes that night work is defined as employment occurring continuously (every working day), regularly (at least half of the working days), or occasionally (less than half of the working days) between 11 pm and 6 am over a four-week period.
The information was published by Destatis to coincide with the transition to summer time, when clocks go forward one hour. Germany’s working population totalled 42.6 million people in 2024. Read more here.
