Seasonal employment in Germany and the 70 working day limit

Seasonal employment of third country nationals is governed by section 15a of the German Employment Ordinance: a maximum of six months within twelve, at least 30 hours a week, and approval from the Federal Employment Agency. A separate social security limit in section 8 of Book Four of the Social Code reads three months or 70 working days.

The two figures are regularly confused, and the confusion is expensive. One decides whether the person may work at all. The other decides whether contributions fall due. They apply side by side, they measure different periods, and neither replaces the other.

What section 15a of the Employment Ordinance requires

The provision covers agriculture and forestry, horticulture, the hotel and catering trade, fruit and vegetable processing, and sawmills. The employment must regularly cover at least 30 hours a week. The individual worker is capped at six months within twelve months, and the holding itself is capped at eight months within twelve, with exceptions for fruit, vegetable, wine, hops and tobacco growing.

The Federal Employment Agency issues either a work permit of up to 90 days within 180 days for nationals of visa exempt states, or an approval with a priority check where the employment runs longer or the nationality is visa bound. There is a further element that advisory copy usually omits: section 15a refers to an arrangement between the Federal Employment Agency and the labour administration of the country of origin, and to the number of work permits the agency sets. The corridor is therefore capped by volume, and the cap sits between two labour administrations rather than with the holding.

For companies looking to hire from Nepal, India or the Philippines that is the first thing to check. Without an arrangement with the origin country, section 15a does not carry the corridor and the plan moves to a different residence purpose.

The 70 working days are a contributions question

Section 8 subsection 1 number 2 of Book Four of the Social Code defines short term employment: it exists where the employment within a calendar year is limited to at most three months or 70 working days, unless it is carried out professionally and exceeds the marginal earnings threshold. For employment on an agricultural holding a separate limit of 15 weeks or 90 working days applies.

Two terms decide the outcome. The period is the calendar year, not the contract: a worker who did 40 days at a fruit farm in May and 40 days at another in September has 80 days and is no longer in short term employment. And professional character means the work is not of minor economic importance to that person; the exception then applies and contributions fall due even if the day count is not reached.

Minimum wage, records and the customs administration

The statutory minimum wage applies to seasonal workers without modification. German customs states, for the Minimum Wage Act, 13.90 euro gross per hour from 1 January 2026 and 14.60 euro from 1 January 2027. At 30 hours a week that comes to roughly 1,807 euro gross a month in 2026, and that is the figure an inspection works from.

Section 17 of the Minimum Wage Act requires employers in the covered sectors to record the start, end and duration of daily working time by the end of the seventh calendar day after the day worked, and to keep the records for at least two years. The documents must be held in Germany in German and produced at the place of work if the inspecting authority asks. In agriculture and catering that is exactly where inspections fail: the hours were worked, and the record was created on day eleven.

An employer providing accommodation and deducting its value from pay should know the limits before the first deduction runs; they are set out in accommodation for foreign workers in Germany. What the customs undeclared work unit checks on site, and the fines attached to it, is described in customs inspections for undeclared work. The European layer with its own duties sits in the EU Seasonal Workers Directive.

A seasonal corridor rarely breaks on the permit. It breaks on the second number nobody tracked: the working days a person already collected elsewhere in the same calendar year. How Werklist documents those days per person across several deployments is set out on our employers page.