Whether you can take a side job during Ausbildung depends on your age, and the honest answer is that German law is far more specific for trainees under 18 than for adult apprentices, where the rules are looser and more about your Ausbildungsvertrag than a fixed statutory cap.
If you’re under 18: a hard legal limit
Trainees who are minors are covered by the Jugendarbeitsschutzgesetz (Youth Employment Protection Act). Under Section 8 of that law, young persons may not be employed for more than 8 hours a day or 40 hours a week — and this cap applies across all your employment combined, not per employer. If you already work close to 8 hours a day at your training company, the law doesn’t leave meaningful extra hours for a second job on top. There’s a narrow exception for agricultural work during harvest season (up to 9 hours a day, capped over a two-week period), which is unlikely to be relevant to most Ausbildung trainees.
If you’re 18 or over: the general working-time law applies, not a trainee-specific cap
Once you turn 18, the Jugendarbeitsschutzgesetz no longer applies to you, and the relevant law becomes the general Arbeitszeitgesetz (Working Hours Act), which governs all employees. Section 3 sets a standard maximum of 8 hours per working day, extendable to 10 hours if the average across six months or 24 weeks doesn’t exceed 8 hours a day. This is the same law that applies to any working adult in Germany — it isn’t written specifically around apprentices holding a second job, but it does still cap your combined working hours across employers.
What the Berufsbildungsgesetz doesn’t say
Germany’s Vocational Training Act (Berufsbildungsgesetz, BBiG) does not contain an explicit rule permitting or banning a Nebenjob (side job) during Ausbildung. In practice, this means:
- There’s no statutory percentage or hours cap specific to “apprentices with a side job” once you’re over 18 — only the general Arbeitszeitgesetz limits above.
- Many Ausbildungsverträge (training contracts) include a clause requiring you to notify or get approval from your training employer before taking on other work — not because the law requires it directly, but because your primary legal obligation under the BBiG is to prioritize and diligently pursue your training. A side job that visibly interferes with that (missed classes, exhaustion affecting performance) can become a contractual issue even without a specific statutory hours cap.
- If your side job is with the same company that’s training you or a closely related one, other contract terms could apply — check your specific Ausbildungsvertrag.
The practical takeaway
If you’re arriving from India as an adult apprentice (the overwhelming majority of applicants), there’s no fixed statutory percentage limiting how many hours you may work in a side job — but the Arbeitszeitgesetz’s roughly 8-hour daily cap applies across all your jobs combined, and your training contract likely requires you to disclose or clear a second job with your employer first. Given how demanding a full Ausbildung schedule already is between the company and Berufsschule, most trainees find there isn’t much practical room for extensive extra work regardless of the legal ceiling — which is also why understanding your actual pay and cost-of-living arithmetic upfront matters more than planning around a side income.
Talk to us about realistic budgeting before you commit — visit our Ausbildung programmes page or contact us.
Where this comes from
- Working hours for minors: Section 8, Jugendarbeitsschutzgesetz (JArbSchG): gesetze-im-internet.de
- Working hours for adults: Section 3, Arbeitszeitgesetz (ArbZG): gesetze-im-internet.de
