Hi everyone,

I’m comparing two German national visa supplementary sheets (Zusatzblatt) for students.

One version says:
“Beschäftigung bis zu 140 Arbeitstage im Jahr gemäß §16b AufenthG …”
(only mentions 140 working days)

Another version says:
“Beschäftigung bis zu 140 volle oder 280 halbe Arbeitstage im Jahr gemäß §16b AufenthG …”
(explicitly mentions 140 full OR 280 half days)

My visa is the shorter wording, the one that only lists 140 working days. Does this still mean I can work 280 half-days per year under German law, or am I limited strictly to 140 days total?

Has anyone had experience with this at the Ausländerbehörde or with employers? Want to be sure before I plan my work schedule.

by Slight_Choice_1092

3 comments

  1. Yes, you are allowed to split those 140 full days into 280 half days.

    You may be required to provide evidence of working only half days though!

  2. If I remember this correctly you do not have to pay Rentenversicherung while studying as your main job. And your main job is what you are doing “most” of the time of the 280 workdays the German year is assumed to contain.
    Interestingly there is no top of what you are allowed to earn per hour.
    In my case I used to be paid by the amount of hours I worked and the monthly payslip never showed more than the allowed number of hours.
    If you find a qualified job (not Amazon), your hourly rate can rise a lot. In my case as a native German (no restrictions because of visa) I decided to voluntarily pay RV and other social contributions when my loan surpassed what I needed for living. Proved to be a good decision decades later when I retired.
    As a foreigner you should probably try to finish your studies as fast as possible and improve your fluency of German if you think about staying and working here for a longer time.

  3. Just to give some context: until the change in 2024 the law literally said “120 Tage oder 240 halbe Tage im Jahr”. So putting it on the residence permit like this was most correct. However the law didn’t define what half a day was. (It was interpreted as 4 hours, reasonable and correct, but it was nowhere written down in the law.)

    So when it changed from 120 to 140 days, the legislator simplified the main rule to “120 days” and specified: “The employments can be counted towards the *Arbeitstagekonto* for every day on which the working time is up to 4 hours as half a day, otherwise as a full day” So the concept of “half a day” is now more explicitly spelt out, and definitely recognized by law.

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