Minijob Limit: EUR 603/Month in 2026 - How the Cap Works

EUR 603 a month, and 43.38 hours of work to earn it. That is the whole shape of a minijob, and it is why the format works as pocket money and fails as a living. What trips students up is not the cap. It is that those hours are also being subtracted from a second, separate allowance nobody mentions at the interview.

What a minijob is

A minijob with an earnings limit is what German law calls low-paid employment: your average monthly pay must not exceed EUR 603, which the Minijob-Zentrale also states as up to EUR 7,236 across a year. When, how often and how long you work does not matter, so the hours can be spread as flexibly as you and the employer like. Cafes, shops, campus admin offices and warehouses hire on this basis constantly, which is why it is often the first German contract an international student signs.

A minijob is dependent employment, not self-employment. The employer decides where, when and for how long you work, and there is a written contract. If you set your own hours and invoice several clients, that is freelance work and a different set of rules and taxes applies.

The cap moves with the minimum wage

The ceiling is pegged to the statutory minimum wage, so it rises when the wage does. Divide EUR 603 by the EUR 13.90 hourly floor that applies from January 2026 and you get exactly 43.38 hours a month, which is what the Minijob-Zentrale publishes. Ten hours in a good week. What students must legally be paid per hour has the rates by field.

A better hourly rate does not raise the cap, it buys back your time. The Minijob-Zentrale's own table for the 603-euro limit runs like this.

You are allowed to go over the cap twice a year

This is the rule most students have never heard and the one that saves the most jobs. If the overrun is genuinely unforeseeable, you may exceed the monthly limit in up to two calendar months within any twelve-month period. The condition is that earnings in such a month stay at or under double the limit, so EUR 1,206. Use both months and your annual ceiling rises from 7,236 to EUR 8,442.

The Minijob-Zentrale's worked example: you cover for a colleague who falls ill and earn 1,200 euros in that month instead of 603. Still a minijob, because nobody could have planned it and it is under 1,206.

Two limits on that flexibility. Payments you could see coming, such as an agreed Christmas or holiday bonus, have to be counted into the monthly average from the start of the contract rather than treated as a surprise. And wild swings do not qualify even if the year adds up: working full time for three months and almost nothing for the rest is not a continuous minijob, and an employer who structures it that way risks a back-payment assessment for full social insurance.

What actually comes out of your payslip

As a student in a minijob you pay nothing toward health, unemployment or long-term care insurance. Pension insurance is the exception: it is compulsory, the total contribution is 18.6 per cent of gross pay, and in a commercial minijob your own share is 3.6 per cent while the employer covers the rest. In a private-household minijob the split reverses, because the employer pays 5 per cent and your share is 13.6.

You can ask your employer to exempt you from the pension contribution and keep that 3.6 per cent. It is a real trade rather than free money: without contributions you do not build full entitlement to the statutory pension scheme. Two things to know before you sign the form. The exemption covers every minijob you hold at the same time, not just the one you signed it with, and you have to tell your other minijob employers about it.

It still costs you work days

Here is the part that catches people. For non-EU students a minijob is normally counted as half days against the 140 full or 280 half day yearly allowance. A handful of hours each week feels like nothing, and by June it has quietly consumed a large slice of your year. Work it out across twelve months before you sign, not in the month you want to take a full-time summer job. How mini-job days are counted against the limit walks through the arithmetic, and the 140/280 rule itself explains the allowance it comes out of.

Two minijobs are fine until they are not

You may hold several minijobs with different employers at once, as long as the combined pay stays under EUR 603 a month. Cross that line and it is not one job that breaks: every one of them becomes subject to full social insurance. The Minijob-Zentrale's example is a cleaner earning 250 a month from January who adds a second job at 350 from June. The total is 600, so both stay minijobs. A raise in either one, and both stop being minijobs the same month. If you already hold a regular insurable job, you may keep exactly one minijob beside it, and any further one is added to the main job for contribution purposes.

Minijob, short-term job, or Werkstudent

Three formats exist beside your degree and they are not interchangeable. A minijob with an earnings limit caps the money and leaves the hours flexible. A kurzfristige Beschaeftigung, a short-term job, is the mirror image: it must be limited from the outset to three months or 70 working days in the calendar year, and within that window the earnings are not capped at all, which is what makes it the right shape for a summer contract. A Werkstudent contract is neither of those: it is regular employment where you work no more than 20 hours a week during the lecture period, and it usually pays best.

Earn regularly between EUR 603.01 and EUR 2,000 a month and you are in the transition band the law calls a midijob, where contributions phase in gradually instead of jumping. Treat the minijob as a supplement: the blocked account covers your basics, the minijob covers the extras. If you need real income, one Werkstudent role beats stacking two minijobs, which risks breaching the earnings cap and the work-day limit in the same month.

Going over the cap for real

Exceed the average regularly, rather than in one unplanned month, and there is no minijob any more. The job is reassessed as normal insurable employment, your deductions change, and your work-day position gets murkier at the same time. Track hours and earnings month by month, because the assessment looks across the year, not at one payslip. The mistakes that cost students their place covers the other paperwork traps.

None of this survives graduation

When you move onto a job-seeker or work visa, the minijob rules and the student day caps stop applying. Your full-time salary becomes the thing that qualifies you to stay, which is a much better problem to have. See what the post-study job-seeker visa allows.

Sources

• Minijob-Zentrale: minijob with an earnings limit
• Minijob-Zentrale: minijobs for students
• Minijob-Zentrale: holding several minijobs
• Make it in Germany

Working out how many hours you can take? Get post-arrival support before you sign a contract.