Two reforms, one bill

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Series: Recruitment, AI & HR in the hospitality industry · Post #24 of 90

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Two reforms, one bill

Why 2027 is the time to rethink the staffing model, not just the costs

Two pieces of news are currently lying next to each other on the desk of every hotel manager in Germany. One: The minimum wage will rise to 14.60 euros on 1 January 2027. The other, from the previous article on pension reform: the special tax- and contribution-free status of mini-jobs is to be abolished. On its own, each of the two pieces of news is a topic for a blog article. Read together, they reveal something else: a double cost movement that hits hardest precisely the form of employment on which the hospitality industry is most dependent.

What will actually happen on 1 January 2027

The Minimum Wage Commission already decided on 27 June 2025 to raise the statutory minimum wage in two steps: to 13.90 euros on 1 January 2026, and to 14.60 euros on 1 January 2027. The Federal Cabinet confirmed this decision by ordinance in October 2025; further approval by the Bundestag or the Bundesrat is no longer required. In total, this means an increase of 13.88 per cent within two years, the most significant increase since the minimum wage was introduced in 2015.

For the mini-job limit, this has a direct, legally established consequence: since October 2022, it has been linked to the minimum wage, according to the formula minimum wage times 130 divided by 3. It will therefore automatically rise with it, from 603 euros in 2026 to probably 632 to 633 euros in 2027. This link was deliberately designed in such a way that mini-jobbers can continue to work about the same number of hours per month – around 43 hours – if they are paid the minimum wage. In purely mathematical terms, the time frame of the mini-job therefore remains stable.

The real bottleneck lies elsewhere

The real double challenge arises from the coincidence of the minimum wage increase with the second reform. Employers already pay a flat-rate pension insurance contribution of 15 per cent on mini-jobs, which is nothing new. Employees, on the other hand, can be exempted from their own contribution share by opting out, and a large proportion of mini-jobbers use precisely this option to get paid the full amount. The Pensions Commission's proposal aims to abolish this opt-out and to transfer mini-jobs to the 50/50 pension insurance obligation as standard. With earnings at the new limit of around 633 euros and a total contribution rate of 18.6 per cent, there would remain a deduction of around 59 euros per month on the employee side, an amount that those affected have so far been able to avoid through the opt-out. A significant part of the additional earnings resulting from the minimum wage increase would thus be eaten up again by the abolition of the voluntary exemption, not because new costs are incurred, but because an exemption previously used is disappearing.

This simultaneity is the real issue, not the minimum wage increase in itself, and not the mini-job reform in itself, but both together, at a time when the hospitality industry is already under pressure. DEHOGA President Guido Zöllick points out that labour costs in the industry have already risen by 34.4 per cent since 2022 alone, while turnover has been declining since the coronavirus period. The VAT reduction to seven per cent introduced on 1 January 2026 partially cushions this, but it does not compensate for a structural cost trend; it merely buys time.

The usual reaction, and why it is not enough

The industry's response to both reforms has so far followed a familiar pattern: associations are negotiating exemptions, transitional periods and tax relief, in the hope that nothing will have to change in the basic staffing model. This is understandable, and part of it is necessary; political advocacy is not a mistake. However, as the sole operational strategy, this pattern falls short for one simple reason: it waits for an outcome that the individual business cannot influence, instead of changing what it can influence in the meantime.

Waiting and seeing is not a neutral option, but a decision in itself, with costs. Every month in which a company continues to base its personnel planning on the assumption that nothing fundamental will change in the current mini-job conditions is a month in which the gap between the current structure and what will actually apply from 2027 does not become smaller. This is the same logic of reaction that is already evident in dealing with the shortage of skilled workers, as already indicated in the article on the mini-job reform: people react to what comes from outside instead of asking themselves beforehand why their own personnel model is so vulnerable to it.

Three considerations can already be made, regardless of how the legislative process turns out in the end. First: an honest assessment of how many positions in your own company are actually based on mini-jobs, and which of these are structurally necessary, as opposed to those that are only run as mini-jobs because it was historically cheaper. Secondly: a model calculation of what the abolition of the opt-out means in concrete terms for your own wage cost structure, not only in January 2027, but now, while there is still time for adjustments. Third: an open discussion with the affected employees themselves. Many will notice the lower net pay well before their own accounting department does, and whoever then loses these employees will lose them to a company that reacted earlier.

What specifically follows from this for your own business planning is more than a single blog article can cover. But the question can already be asked now: if mini-jobs become noticeably more expensive in 2027 and at the same time lose most of their financial advantage for employees, how viable is a personnel model that requires both low costs for the company and a real net benefit for employees at the same time?

Sources

Minimum Wage Commission. (2025, 27 June). Decision to increase the statutory minimum wage for 2026 and 2027.

Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs. (2025). Mindestlohn steigt zum 1. Januar 2026 auf 13,90 Euro [Press release]. https://www.bmas.de

German Trade Union Confederation (DGB). (2026). Statutory minimum wage in Germany 2026. https://www.dgb.de/service/ratgeber/mindestlohn/

German Hotel and Catering Association (DEHOGA). (2025, December). Statement by President Guido Zöllick on labour costs and VAT reduction. Quoted from Tagesspiegel, 30/12/2025.

Minijob-Zentrale. (2026). Verdienstgrenze im Minijob: Berechnung und Entwicklung 2025–2027. https://magazin.minijob-zentrale.de

AOK – The health insurance company. (2026). Checkbrief: Neuer Mindestlohn, Minijobs und Übergangsbereich 2026. (Checkbrief: New minimum wage, mini-jobs and transitional area 2026.)

Pension Commission of the Federal Government. (2026). Final report on the reform of old-age pensions in Germany, submitted on 23 June 2026.

Note: Both the 2027 minimum wage increase and the mini-job reform are at different stages of legislation at the time of writing this article; the minimum wage increase has already been bindingly decided, but the mini-job reform has not yet been.