The Chancellor himself has heated up the debate again: “Can we please talk about how we can create better incentives to go to work?” asked Friedrich Merz at an election campaign event in Baden-Württemberg. On average, Germans called in sick for almost three weeks a year. “Is that really right? Is that really necessary?” the CDU politician said angrily.
So are the Germans a nation of work-shy malingerers, as the Chancellor suggests? For Markus Söder (CSU) this seems to have been clear for a long time: “Bloodlining must be reduced,” the Bavarian Prime Minister recently demanded.
However, there is now a large Bavarian company a few kilometers from Söder’s Munich State Chancellery that deals with the issue in a decidedly calm manner and, according to its own information, has no problem with excessive sickness rates: the car manufacturer BMW, which employs almost 90,000 people across Germany. The number of days of incapacity for work has been “well below both the federal level and the industry benchmark for over ten years,” the DAX group said upon request.
BMW sees itself in a good position
And BMW also gives a number: in 2025, the sickness rate in Germany, i.e. the proportion of days missed in total working hours, was 3.6 percent. This also includes the first days of illness, for which no medical certificate is required. Compared to the number of days absent in the German economy as a whole and the average values in the metal and electrical industries, BMW says that its own rate is doing well.
Employee representatives explicitly highlight BMW as a positive example. There are sometimes double-digit sickness rates in German companies, said Christiane Benner, First Chairwoman of IG Metall, in a FAS interview in November. “Something is obviously wrong.” But the reason is often that managers fail.
“A culture of looking”
It’s different at the Munich car company: “If you often miss Mondays or Fridays at BMW, then we’ll look into it. I think that’s also part of leadership: making an effort to see what’s wrong,” said Benner. At BMW there is “a culture of looking,” praised the union leader: “You are asked: What was going on on Friday? Do you need support? That’s a different matter than if it was accepted without comment.”
BMW’s Stuttgart competitor Mercedes, on the other hand, is struggling with high sickness rates. “It shouldn’t be so easy to call in sick,” demanded CEO Ola Källenius as early as 2024. He doesn’t think it’s okay that sickness rates in Germany are sometimes more than twice as high as at Mercedes locations in other countries. Allianz boss Oliver Bäte also sees a need for action.
