Arbeitszeitwünsche und ihre kurzfristige Realisierung

Abstract

In the debate on working time there have been recent new developments and various concepts of optional working hours have been in the discussion. This has been triggered by the large numbers of workers in Germany who wish to change their working hours so that the demands of non work-related activities or caring responsibilities can be brought into balance with the demands of work. While differences between actual and preferred working hours have been relatively well researched, little is known about the individual successes in adjusting real working time to desired hours of work over time. By means of longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP), this article presents first empirical evidence and thus contributes towards closing this gap in research. Our findings indicate that more than two fifths of all employees who wish to change their weekly working time by at least five hours are able to achieve a real change of at least three hours in the short term. Most successful are those wishing to change their place of work and seeking to achieve bigger changes to their working time.