Wiesbaden – November 05, 2026 -- German employers paid €49.41 per hour worked in Hamburg in 2024, the highest of any federal state and €13.01 more than in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, where the figure was €36.40, according to the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis). The national average was €44.32 per hour.
Eastern states and Schleswig-Holstein stay below €40 an hour
Destatis groups the 16 states into three tiers with similar labor costs. The lowest tier comprises the eastern non-city states and Schleswig-Holstein, with costs between €36.40 in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and €39.95 in Schleswig-Holstein. Saxony-Anhalt was the second-cheapest state at €36.53.
A middle tier of Saarland, Lower Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate ranged from €42.53 in Saarland to €44.15 in Rhineland-Palatinate.
The top tier covers Hesse, Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria and the city-states, with costs from €45.03 in Bremen to €49.41 in Hamburg. Hesse ranked second at €47.83.
Air passenger transport costs €83.78 an hour, over three times restaurant labor
Four sectors averaged well above €70 per hour worked: passenger air transport (€83.78), tobacco processing (€75.82), coke and refined petroleum products (€74.40) and coal mining (€73.75).
At the other end, restaurants and food service recorded €25.73, accommodation €26.68, and building services and landscaping €27.34.
Gross earnings absorb 75.9% of labor costs, with special payments rising
The overall cost structure has barely changed since 2008. In 2024, 75.9% of labor costs went to employees' gross earnings and 22.6% to employer social contributions. Spending on training and further education held at 0.4%.
Within gross earnings, special payments and pay for non-worked days such as vacation and public holidays rose slightly to 10.9% of total labor costs. Pay for hours actually worked slipped to 56.7%. Destatis says the higher special payments may be linked to inflation compensation bonuses that could be paid out through the end of 2024.
Employer sick-pay costs more than doubled to €2,677 per full-time employee
Continued pay during illness, counted within social contributions, rose from 2.7% of labor costs in 2008 to 3.6% in 2024, an increase of 0.9 percentage points. Average spending per full-time employee climbed from €1,262 to €2,677 over the period.
Survey runs every four years, so earlier estimates face revision
The figures come from the labor cost survey, conducted every four years under EU-wide standards. For the years between surveys, Destatis extrapolates net labor costs per hour worked from the latest survey. Once the 2024 results are fully available, the estimates for 2021, 2022 and 2023 will be revised and the 2025 estimate recalculated on the 2024 base.