How many minijobs can you have? The 2026 rules

The law names no number. Section 8(2) SGB IV requires several marginally paid jobs to be added together. So the total is what matters: if it stays at or below €603 a month, all jobs are minijobs, and each employer pays the flat-rate levies for its share.

If the total exceeds the limit, all jobs that are added together lose minijob status and become subject to insurance. If the combined pay falls in the transition zone, you then pay reduced contributions of your own, as in a midijob. The same applies if one of the jobs is a minijob in a private household: it counts toward the total too.

The table shows the most common combinations at a glance.

Alongside a main job subject to social insurance you may hold one minijob without it being added to the main job. That is the minijob you started first. It is registered with the Minijob-Zentrale and keeps all minijob advantages.

Every further minijob, however, is added to the main job. It then becomes subject to health, long-term care and pension insurance and is registered with the health insurer like the main job. It stays exempt from unemployment insurance, because section 27(2) of Social Code III does not add it to a main job there.

Tax changes too: the 2 percent flat-rate tax requires the employer to pay flat-rate pension contributions. For the second minijob that is added to the main job, that is no longer the case. It is then taxed either under your wage-tax class, usually class VI, or the employer opts for a 20 percent flat-rate tax under section 40a(2a) of the Income Tax Act.

No, at least not as a minijob. If you work for the same employer in a main job and additionally on a minijob basis, the social-insurance bodies treat this as a single employment relationship. The minijob pay is added to the main job and subject to contributions as normal.

The same principle applies to two minijobs with the same employer: they count as one job, and their combined pay is what counts for the limit. If you take on extra hours with your own employer, it is therefore better to settle them as additional hours under the existing contract rather than as a second minijob.

Short-term employment, meaning a job limited from the outset to at most three months or 70 working days in a calendar year, is not added to a minijob. The condition is that the two jobs are with different employers. How much you earn in the short-term job does not matter for this.

A pension, studies, self-employment or citizen’s income (Bürgergeld) are not a main job for the purpose of adding jobs together either. If you are, for example, a pensioner or a student without a job subject to insurance, you may hold several minijobs as long as their total stays under the limit. Social benefits such as citizen’s income or a reduced-earning-capacity pension do, however, have their own additional-earnings rules, which you should check separately.

Every employer needs to know whether you have other jobs, because that is the only way to classify your minijob correctly. That is why most ask about other employment in writing when you are hired. If you take on another job later, tell your employers in good time.

If the Minijob-Zentrale finds that jobs added together exceed the limit, it informs the employers. Compulsory insurance generally starts only with this notice, not retroactively, unless the employer deliberately or grossly negligently failed to clarify the facts. Honest information therefore protects you from trouble as well.

If you have been exempted from compulsory pension insurance, the exemption applies to all minijobs you hold at the same time, and it cannot be revoked for as long as those jobs last. How the minijob is taxed for you is explained in our guide on minijobs and taxes.