Twenty hours a week is the best-known figure in this area and the most misunderstood. It does not appear in the statute: it is a threshold developed in practice, beyond which work is taken to crowd out study. Two practical questions follow — how to count hours during lecture periods, and what changes in the holidays.
The twenty-hour rule and what changes in the holidays
During lecture periods working time is capped at roughly twenty hours a week. Outside the semester the cap loosens but does not disappear: what counts is how many weeks in the year exceeded it.
✓ Verified: 02/08/2026
WHAT TO DO
› Details and tips
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Max recommends:
In March I took a second job and assumed that with the semester over there was nothing to count. There was: weeks with extra hours add up across the year, and by December I had crossed the line. The recalculation arrived for several months at once.
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Lea recommends:
Keep two plain tables: weeks in the lecture period and weeks in the holidays. The insurer will not ask for a yearly average but for specific weeks — with a ready list that is five minutes of work instead of three letters.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Where do the twenty hours come from if the law does not say so? ▾
The figure is not written into the statute. It emerged from social insurance practice and case law as the threshold beyond which studying stops being the main activity. That is why insurers apply it, and any dispute turns on your actual workload rather than on the wording of the provision.
Can I work full time during the holidays? ▾
As a rule yes: outside lecture periods extra hours are possible because they do not crowd out study at that moment. Such weeks are counted, though: if too many accumulate across the year, the privilege is treated as lost retroactively for the whole period.
What if lectures have ended but exams are still running? ▾
What matters is your university’s official lecture period, not how busy you feel. The university publishes those dates itself, and that calendar is what gets checked. Exam phases inside the semester are normally not treated as holidays.
What happens if the limit is exceeded? ▾
The privilege falls away and the job becomes fully subject to insurance: health, care and unemployment contributions apply. The recalculation runs from the point where the conditions stopped being met, and the difference is claimed back.