While employment in once key industrial sectors is in decline Germany is seeing a significant increase in people working for the state.
According to data released by the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) yesterday, the number of people working in the public sector has grown by 16 per cent between 2014 and 2024 – from 4.6 million to 5.4 million people.
The largest part of the increase came from additional state employees (plus-22 per cent to 3.4 million). In addition, the number of career civil servants grew by 6 per cent to almost 2 million.
In Germany, there are two types of public workers: Career civil servants and regular public employees.
Career civil servants enjoy a special legal status that comes with several benefits, such as de facto interminable employment, higher pensions than regular employees and better healthcare. They also receive higher salaries if they have children – which is unheard of in the private sector.
State employees who are not civil servants also enjoy advantages over private sector employees, such as high workplace security and pension subsidies.
In the past 10 years, the highest number of new full civil servants were in public education (52,000 additional positions) and public safety (46,000 positions).
Conversely, the number of civil servants in transportation declined by 26,000 – largely due to the partial privatisation of elements of the German railway system.
While working for the state is booming, the number of well-paying jobs in the industrial sectors, where Germany once was leading, are in decline.
In 2025, more than 120,000 jobs (or 2.3 per cent of all jobs) were lost in the industrial sector. Currently, less than 5.4 million Germans are working in industrial jobs – meaning that more Germans now work for the state than in the automotive, chemical or engineering industry combined.
And while Germany’s economy is in decline, the state is spending more on public sector employees.
In April 2026, interior minister Alexander Dobrindt (Christian Social Union, CSU) presented plans to raise the remuneration for civil servants – after the German Constitutional Court had found that some of them had been paid too little in the past.
The new salary structure for civil servants is expected to cost German taxpayers more than €3.5 billion per year.
