The end of mini-jobs

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Series: Recruitment, AI & HR in the hospitality industry · Post #23 of 90

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The end of mini-jobs

What the pension reform means for the hotel industry, and why the real question is a different one

Saturday evening, 7 pm, a hotel with 60 rooms. A temporary worker at reception, two mini-jobbers in service, and a student in the kitchen on a 603-euro basis. Without these three people, the evening would not be any less well organised. It simply wouldn't take place. It is precisely this picture that explains why a pension policy reform that begins with contribution rates and transitional periods has the effect of an earthquake in the hotel and hospitality industry.

What the Pensions Commission is proposing

On 23 June 2026, the Pensions Commission appointed by the Federal Government, under the leadership of Frank-Jürgen Weise and Constanze Janda, submitted its final report to Federal Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Labour Minister Bärbel Bas. The package, which is intended to stabilise the state pension financially, includes 33 measures, from adjusting the retirement age to abolishing the early retirement pension without deductions. One of the measures directly affects the hotel industry: the special status of mini-jobs is to be abolished. In the future, marginal employees, with the exception of school pupils, would be regularly included in the statutory pension insurance scheme, and no one would then be exempt from taxes and contributions.

The figures behind this are specific. Nationwide, there were around 7.51 million mini-jobbers in March 2026, almost 3.5 million of whom were doing the mini-job as a secondary income alongside a main job. For the hospitality industry, DEHOGA estimates the number of jobs affected to be around 1.1 to 1.2 million. With earnings at the current mini-job limit of 603 euros, a pension contribution of 18.6 per cent would be due, split equally between employer and employee, which amounts to 56.08 euros on the employee's side. This would turn 603 euros into 546.92 euros net. For employers, the same amount is added on as an additional non-wage labour cost.

An industry fighting with all its might

The reaction of the industry associations leaves nothing to be desired in terms of clarity. DEHOGA President Guido Zöllick called the proposal a "frontal attack" on the industry, and DEHOGA Chief Executive Officer Jana Schimke announced: "We will fight with all our might to preserve mini-jobs. It is not possible to maintain this offer without our mini-jobbers." The association also warns that abolishing the special status would encourage undeclared work instead of curbing it. The Confederation of German Employers' Associations makes a similar argument, but a more fundamental one: mini-jobs would not displace full-time jobs, but would instead activate additional labour potential that would otherwise not enter the labour market at all.

This contrasts with the position of the Pensions Commission itself, which was explicitly praised by Labour Minister Bas ("a really good overall package"), as well as the perspective of the trade unions, which are primarily concerned about the declining pension level for today's pensioners, and less about the mini-job issue itself. Both sides have understandable arguments, and both are ignoring the same point.

The question missing from the debate

The entire public discussion is taking place on a single level: how expensive will it be, and how can the damage be limited? That is a legitimate question. However, it is not the only one that responsible management should be asking itself now.

The deeper question is: why is a business model so heavily dependent on a single employment instrument that can be changed by politicians at any time, so that a single pension policy decision is enough to call Saturday night business into question? Research on the employment situation in the hospitality industry has been pointing to precisely this pattern for years: a structural dependence on flexible, poorly protected forms of employment, which solves planning problems in the short term, but in the long term increases the industry's vulnerability to precisely such political interventions, rather than reducing it.

This is not a criticism of the businesses that currently rely on mini-jobs; they are simply reacting rationally to the conditions that the market and policymakers have imposed on them over the years. It is an invitation not only to view the reform as a threat that must be fought against, but also to see it for what it is: very concrete, very topical evidence of what happens when a business structures its workforce around the most favourable available scheme, rather than around a question that is far more fundamental. Which role (not a job, not a position!) must be reliably filled this Saturday evening, regardless of which form of employment is currently the most tax-efficient?
An answer to this question cannot be contained in a single blog post. But the question itself should now, at the very latest, be on the agenda of every management team, before the legislative process in the second half of 2026 decides on matters that are, in any case, no longer open to negotiation.

Sources:

Deutscher Hotellerie- und Gastronomieverband (DEHOGA). (2026, Juni). Stellungnahmen von Präsident Guido Zöllick und Hauptgeschäftsführerin Jana Schimke zur Rentenreform. Gastgewerbe-Magazin; t-online.

Bundesvereinigung der Deutschen Arbeitgeberverbände (BDA). (2026, Juni). Stellungnahme von Präsident Rainer Dulger zur Minijob-Reform. Zitiert nach t-online, 25.06.2026.

Rentenkommission der Bundesregierung. (2026). Abschlussbericht zur Reform der Altersvorsorge in Deutschland (33 Maßnahmen), übergeben am 23. Juni 2026 an Bundeskanzler Friedrich Merz und Bundesministerin Bärbel Bas.

Minijob-Zentrale. (2026, März). Statistik zur geringfügigen Beschäftigung in Deutschland.

AOK – Die Gesundheitskasse. (2026). Checkbrief: Neuer Mindestlohn, Minijobs und Übergangsbereich 2026.

Schmid, K., & Stracke, S. (2023). Branchenanalyse Gastgewerbe: Beschäftigungsentwicklung, Arbeitsbedingungen und Perspektiven vor dem Hintergrund von Corona und Mindestlohn (Forschungsförderung Working Paper Nr. 301). Hans-Böckler-Stiftung