Repercussions of the minimum wage in the seasonal work sector

Seasonal workers are of special importance to the German hotel and catering industry, the agriculture and forestry sector, as well as the horticulture industry.  On the one hand, the minimum pay in these sectors is regulated by the legal minimum wage, which was introduced with the minimum wage law (MiLoG) on January 1, 2015 (hotel and catering); on the other hand generally binding collective agreements apply (agriculture and forestry, horticulture).

Still, possible repercussions of the minimum wage on seasonal workers are largely unexplored. In general, there are hardly any empirically sound findings concerning the seasonal work sector in Germany, starting from the number of seasonal workers to their working conditions, such as e.g. their remuneration. For this purpose, an empirical operationalization of seasonal work in the Employment History (BeH) of the BA was carried out, which can serve as a basis for further analyzes of seasonal work. This included micro-data on short-term employment that have not yet been analyzed by researchers.

The objective of the project was to at first discuss possible repercussions of the introduction of a legal or a tariff minimum wage on seasonal work in Germany in the agriculture and forestry, the horticulture and the hotel and catering sectors, as well as to evaluate descriptively the size and the structure of seasonal work in Germany using a secondary statistical dataset of the Federal Employment Agency (BA).

Based on the findings of these steps research designs were developed, which are suited for evaluating the scale and quality of employment of seasonal workers in the aforementioned industries in Germany.

Report (in German)