Overview
- Destatis reports about 2.2 million people held fixed-term contracts in 2025, equal to 6.0% of core workers aged 15–64.
- Around 6.4 million people, or 17.2% of core workers, were in atypical employment including short part-time, marginal jobs and agency work.
- Young entrants face the greatest exposure: 18.3% of 15–25-year-olds had fixed-term contracts, far above the overall rate.
- More than half of fixed-term contracts for workers aged 25 and over lasted under one year, and only 2.7% of those on fixed terms said they chose this form deliberately.
- The figures come from the Mikrozensus and the integrated EU labour survey and show a decade-long fall in these work forms (fixed-term 7.0% in 2015 to 6.0% in 2025), pointing to policy questions about training-to-work paths and sector hiring practices.