Should Germans have one more working day during the year? If you ask economists, the answer is yes, so they have proposed that one of the public holidays should no longer be a day off. The German Economic Institute (DI) has calculated what the financial benefit would be if one of the public holidays were a working day.

According to this estimate, gross domestic product (GDP) would increase by between five and 8,6 billion euros. With an additional working day, GDP would increase by 0,2 percent. There are two different approaches to calculating the financial benefit of an additional working day. One is the so-called calendar adjustment because the number of working days changes from year to year – e.g. Easter is not always in the same quarter. According to this approach, GDP would increase by five billion euros.

Another approach is the one that existed when the Day of Repentance and Prayer was abolished as a holiday, i.e. a non-working day. This approach implies two scenarios – one is an increase in production, and the other is a decrease in labor costs.

Both scenarios, as calculated, would lead to an increase in GDP by 8,6 billion euros. The aforementioned institute pointed out that there is a big difference whether the additional working day would be in summer or winter.

The president of the Munich Institute for Economic Research, Clemens Fuest, also supports the abolition of one of the public holidays. He cited the lack of labor as the reason for this. He recalled that it is necessary to increase the number of jobs and reduce bureaucracy, writes Tagesschau, transmits Kliks.ba.