Gainful Employment and Caregiving: Reconciling Formal Employment with Caring for a Relative

The burden of care varies not only with age, gender and income, but also with the hours worked in formal employment. An analysis of responses to the 2022 Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) shows that caregivers who were working full-time spent an average of 1.9 hours per working day providing nursing care, only half as many as those not in employment. Male carers are often working full-time, although the proportion of full-time workers is less than among non-carers. The differences between female carers and non-carers are smaller, although here too there is a slightly higher level of employment among non-carers. Only a minority of working-age family caregivers make a substantial change to their level of employment when they start nursing: a bare 10 per cent of carers aged between 18 and 66 have become unemployed since taking on their current caring commitment. While this represents a total of nearly 400,000 individuals, it is counterbalanced by the approximately 260,000 caregivers who have actually taken up new formal employment in addition to their nursing responsibilities. At the same time, four out of every five of those who have reached retirement age and left gainful employment are disinclined to return to it, regardless of whether they are providing care or not. Policymakers’ focus should thus be on making working hours more flexible. This will not only render individual solutions for balancing work and caregiving easier to achieve; it will also serve to keep caregivers of working age, especially those approaching retirement, in the labour market for as long as possible.