Press release No. N 019 of 24 April 2020
- Physicians have the longest weekly working hours in the health sector
- Nurses work shifts and on weekends more often than physicians
- Four out of five persons in employment in the health sector are women
WIESBADEN – Many of the people in health and nursing care occupations are under exceptional strain in the coronavirus pandemic, many of them working night and day, also on weekends. The Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) reports that physicians belong to an occupational group which worked very long hours even before the coronavirus crisis. In 2018, nearly one third (32%) of the 445,000 physicians in Germany generally worked more than 48 hours per week. Only 6% of the more than 4 million people in health and nursing care occupations had such long weekly working hours. Among them were well above 1.1 million nurses and just under 0.7 million geriatric nurses. Although the average weekly working hours of full-time employees in health occupations were the exact average (41 hours) of all occupational groups, working shifts and on weekends was much more common for them than for the average person in employment.
