140/280 Days: The Work Rule Every International Student Must Know

140 working days per year. That is your allowance as a non-EU student, written into section 16b of the Residence Act as an Arbeitstagekonto, a working-day account. You do not need to ask anyone for it, and asking for more will almost certainly get a no. The rule is short. Students still get it wrong, usually because they assume the account is filled by hours rather than by days.

How a day is counted, and why eight hours is a myth

The statute gives two ways of charging work to the account, and it says part-time employment is counted in whichever way is most favourable to you, assessed week by week.

• The daily method. A day on which your working time is up to four hours counts as half a working day. Every other day counts as a full one.
• The weekly method. A calendar week counts as two and a half working days. During the lecture period this only applies if you work up to 20 hours that week. Outside the lecture period it applies whatever the hours look like.

Read the daily rule again, because it is the one people get wrong. There is no eight-hour ceiling on a full day. A five-hour shift and an eleven-hour shift both cost exactly one day. The only threshold that exists is four hours, and it is the boundary between half a day and a whole one.

The same 20 hours, three different prices

Since the office applies the cheaper method each week, how you arrange your shifts changes what the week costs you. Twenty hours is twenty hours to your employer and to your bank account. To the working-day account it is not.

Concentrating the same hours into fewer, longer days is the cheapest pattern, and stretching them thinly across five days is the most expensive. Nobody tells students this, and over a semester it is worth several days of allowance.

Does the allowance actually stretch to a year of part-time work?

Yes, with room to spare. At two and a half days a week, a full 52 weeks costs 130 days against a limit of 140. Concentrate your hours into two longer shifts a week and the same year costs 104. So a steady 20-hour job running the whole year fits inside the allowance, which is the point of the weekly method. What does not fit is a steady job plus a full-time summer plus a voluntary internship, all counted at the daily rate.

The Werkstudent contract is the standard way that steady arrangement is written. On the social insurance side, students enrolled at a university and employed for wages are exempt from compulsory employee health insurance under the Social Code, which is what makes a Werkstudent job cheaper for both sides than the same job done by a non-student.

University jobs are free

Section 16b says it in one line: student side jobs are not charged to the account. A research assistant, teaching assistant or library post at your own institution costs you nothing at all from the 140. If you can get one, it is the best-value work available to an international student, and it is usually closer to your field than the alternatives.

What a minijob really costs, in days and in euros

Short hours do not mean free hours. The minijob earnings limit is EUR 603 a month, or EUR 7,236 a year, from 1 January 2026. At the statutory minimum wage of EUR 13.90 an hour that is a little over ten hours a week, and how you spread those hours decides whether the week costs you one day or two. Three short shifts under four hours each cost one and a half days; two longer ones cost two.

Plenty of students run a minijob and spend the remaining allowance on extra work elsewhere, but only if they have done the arithmetic. Whether your mini-job days count goes through the edge cases.

Internships split into two categories

A mandatory internship written into your curriculum does not touch your day allowance. A voluntary internship does, even an unpaid one. Students discover this in the wrong order more often than any other part of the rule, usually after a summer placement they assumed was free. Check your examination regulations before you accept, and read how a voluntary internship is counted, because the timing changes the price by half.

Semester breaks are cheaper than they look

You are allowed to work full-time in the lecture-free period, and outside the lecture period the weekly method applies regardless of how the hours fall. A full-time week in the break therefore costs two and a half days, not five. That is the single most useful thing to know about scheduling a summer.

It is still real money out of a finite account. Eight full-time weeks in the break cost 20 days and leave 120 for the rest of the year. Work at EUR 13.90 an hour for 40 hours a week and that same block is EUR 556 gross a week, so the break is worth about EUR 4,448 before deductions. Short-term employment limited to three months or 70 working days in a calendar year is free of social insurance contributions, which is why break work often nets close to gross.

The tax line most students cross without noticing

The basic tax-free allowance for 2026 is EUR 12,348. Below that, income tax is not owed, and anything deducted through the year comes back on your annual return. A 20-hour week at the minimum wage is EUR 278 gross, roughly EUR 1,204 a month averaged over the year, which annualises to about EUR 14,456. That is over the line, so a year-round part-time job plus a busy summer puts you into taxable territory. Keep your payslips; the return is where you get the difference back.

Going over is a residence-permit problem

Working beyond the limit without permission breaches your residence conditions, and it follows you into future applications, including a later work visa. The foreigners office can see your registered hours through the tax and social insurance record. Keep your own log of days worked, dated, with hours. If you find you have already exceeded the limit, stop and get advice rather than hoping nobody adds it up. The paperwork mistakes that derail student applications covers the other avoidable ones.

The limit ends when your student status does

Once you move onto a job-seeker or work visa after graduation, none of this applies. You work normal hours, and your salary becomes the thing that qualifies you to stay. See what the post-study job-seeker visa allows for how that transition works. Until then, and for rates while you are still a student, the minimum wage students must be paid tells you what your days are worth.

Sources

• Residence Act, section 16b, working-day account
• Social Code V, section 6, insurance exemption for students
• Social Code IV, section 8, minor and short-term employment
• Minijob-Zentrale - earnings limit
• Income Tax Act, section 32a, basic allowance
• Federal Ministry of Labour - minimum wage

Not sure how your job counts? Get post-arrival support and have your schedule checked before you sign.