Overview
- The WSI analysis published Tuesday, June 16, 2026, found that 44 percent of private‑sector employees receive employer vacation pay, unchanged from 2025.
- Whether workers get vacation pay depends mostly on tariff status, with 73 percent of employees in tariff‑bound firms receiving it versus 35 percent in non‑tariff firms.
- Larger companies are far more likely to pay vacation money, with 61 percent of staff in firms over 500 employees getting it compared with 50 percent in medium firms and 37 percent in small firms.
- Clear distributional gaps appear by gender and region: 49 percent of men but 38 percent of women receive vacation pay, and 46 percent in West Germany receive it versus 33 percent in East Germany, a difference linked to lower tariff coverage in the East.
- The variation in amounts is wide—WSI‑Tarifarchiv shows payments from about €186 to €2,904—reflecting a long decline in tariff binding from around 80 percent in the mid‑1990s to roughly 49 percent today, which helps explain why low‑paid industries, women and East German workers face bigger barriers to affordable travel; the WSI result draws on roughly 50,000 self‑reported entries to Lohnspiegel.de.