A 2026 survey found migrant live-in caregivers reporting 71.5-hour working weeks. German employment law offers protections, but care arrangements inside private homes are difficult to oversee.

A Bulgarian woman arrived in Berlin to care for an elderly resident. Her employment contract specified 30 hours a week. She received €950 net per month and had a room in the woman’s home.

According to her later court claim, the arrangement required far more than 30 hours. She said she had to leave her bedroom door open at night so she could hear calls for help, including requests to use the toilet.

The dispute reached Germany’s Federal Labour Court in 2021.

It was not a case about whether an elderly person deserved help. The question was whether the worker’s obligation to remain available counted as paid working time.

Five years later, new research suggests that similar tensions still deserve attention.

Germany has a name for this kind of household arrangement: 24-Stunden-Pflege, or 24-hour care.

The expression promises reassurance to families. It says much less about when the person providing assistance is supposed to stop working.

What the new research found

A study published in June 2026 in the European Journal of Public Health examined the experiences of 429 migrant live-in caregivers in Germany.

Most were women. Their average age was 54.7, and 77% were over 49.

Half came from Poland. Others came mainly from Bulgaria and Croatia, with a smaller group from Romania.

The researchers found an average reported working week of 71.5 hours.

Some participants worked seven days a week. Approximately 63% said they had to get up at night to provide assistance, while 47% reported on-call duties.

Almost half said they had no formal employment contract.

The findings deserve attention, but their limits matter.

Researchers recruited respondents through multilingual Facebook groups and related networks. Participation was voluntary. The sample was not designed to represent every migrant live-in caregiver in Germany.

The 71.5-hour figure therefore describes the surveyed respondents, not a verified national average.

The study also included employees, contractors and self-employed workers. Their legal circumstances are not necessarily identical.

Even with these qualifications, the reported working patterns raise a difficult question.

How much rest can someone obtain when their workplace is also the home of a person who may need help at any hour?

The trouble with the words 24-hour care

Germany’s federal health information portal is unusually clear about this market.

It explains that an employee living with an older person cannot provide genuine round-the-clock care alone while complying with the applicable working-time rules.

Employment law generally limits daily working hours and requires rest periods.

The term 24-Stunden-Pflege can therefore mislead families if it suggests that one worker will always be available.

The distinction becomes important when someone requires assistance during the night.

A caregiver may help with breakfast and household tasks in the morning. She may also provide companionship or support with personal care later in the day.

But what happens when the older person wakes repeatedly at night?

Some households have relatives or professional services available to share the responsibility. Others may rely heavily on the live-in worker.

The problem is not that every live-in arrangement requires illegal hours.

It is that a family’s need for continuous support may exceed what one employed caregiver can lawfully provide.

The German government has already acknowledged this difficulty. In December 2024, an interministerial working group published proposals examining how live-in care arrangements could operate on a clearer legal basis.

The issue was therefore well known before the latest survey appeared.

When being at home is still being at work

The Bulgarian caregiver’s court case explains why the distinction matters.

She worked for a Bulgarian company that sent her to a private household in Berlin.

Her contract specified 30 hours weekly. She claimed that her actual duties and standby obligations extended much further.

She sought additional payment.

On June 24, 2021, the Federal Labour Court ruled that foreign employees posted to German households are entitled to the applicable statutory minimum wage for hours actually worked and qualifying standby duty.

But the judges did not establish that she worked 21 hours every day.

They sent the case back so the lower court could examine the evidence and determine how much time qualified as work, standby duty or genuine free time.

That legal distinction is central.

A caregiver who lives in a spare room is not necessarily working every hour she spends there.

But someone required to remain available throughout the night may be performing standby duty even when no immediate task is being carried out.

The actual obligation matters more than the label in the contract.

Not every caregiver has the same employment arrangement

Families obtain live-in support through several different models.

Some employ the worker directly. Others use a foreign company that posts employees to Germany.

There are also arrangements involving self-employed caregivers.

The differences affect who is responsible for employment obligations and how particular working-time rules apply.

A genuinely self-employed person is not automatically subject to every rule governing employees. But a contract describing somebody as independent does not, by itself, determine whether that classification is legally valid.

German authorities can examine how the person actually works and who exercises control.

Does the caregiver decide when to work? Can she refuse assignments? Who determines her duties?

These are important questions when assessing the arrangement.

Families may believe a placement agency has handled every legal requirement. Workers may believe the agency will intervene if the duties become excessive.

The reality can be more complicated.

An employment agreement may specify limited hours, while the household expects someone to help whenever necessary.

That gap cannot be resolved simply by using the words independent contractor.

What happens when care work enters private life?

The 2026 survey found that live-in caregivers reported considerably greater conflict between work and private life than the comparison groups.

They also reported fewer opportunities for professional development and lower job satisfaction.

Their intentions to leave their work were stronger.

There is an important detail here.

The surveyed caregivers did not report higher demands in every category. Compared with geriatric nurses, they reported lower quantitative and physical demands on the measures used.

Their distinctive difficulty was the way work entered personal life.

I find that more revealing than a general claim that caregiving is exhausting.

A hospital employee can finish a shift and leave the building. A live-in caregiver may have a room of her own, but the person needing assistance remains nearby.

The worker may find it difficult to disconnect mentally, particularly when she expects interruptions during the night.

Researchers found an association between greater work-private life conflict and poorer motivational and health-related outcomes.

Because the study was cross-sectional, it cannot prove that this conflict caused every reported health problem.

It does, however, identify a pressure that employers and families should take seriously.

A second study gives the problem a human scale

Another 2026 study of Polish live-in caregivers examined occupational health risks through 16 interviews.

Fifteen participants were women.

Researchers documented accounts of long working hours and insufficient rest. Some participants described assignments involving physical tasks for which they had received little preparation.

Several reported difficulty dealing with agencies when the actual duties differed from what had been promised.

One woman described being sent into care work without training in how to move or lift a patient safely.

Others mentioned uncertain insurance arrangements and problems obtaining appropriate medical support while working in Germany.

The study also described a recurring problem with expectations.

Some agencies advertised 24-hour care without clearly explaining the limits of what a live-in worker could legally provide.

Families expected extensive availability. Workers sometimes discovered that the actual assignment differed considerably from the original description.

The interviews are valuable because they show how such disagreements arise.

They do not establish that every German agency behaves in this way.

The agency can control the contract. The family controls the day.

A 2026 study linked to the German Institute for Economic Research investigated how intermediaries influence the wages and working conditions of migrant caregivers.

The researchers examined a system in which workers negotiate with agencies while also dealing directly with households.

Their findings suggest that longer working hours can coincide with lower effective earnings.

One reason is that wages and duties may be negotiated in separate settings.

A caregiver might agree to certain conditions with an agency. Once inside the household, additional requests may emerge.

A relative asks for another task. The older person’s health deteriorates. Night-time assistance becomes more frequent.

The agreed payment may remain unchanged even as the workload grows.

The agency may not witness what happens each day. The family may not understand the worker’s contractual limits.

The caregiver is left to negotiate with people on whom she may depend for accommodation during the assignment.

That is a difficult position from which to challenge an arrangement.

It also makes clear why responsibility cannot rest entirely on the family or the worker.

Intermediaries influence expectations before the caregiver arrives.

German families face a difficult choice

An elderly parent wants to remain at home.

The children have jobs and households of their own. They may live in another city.

Professional home-care services can help with particular tasks, but they do not necessarily provide continuous companionship or overnight supervision.

A live-in caregiver can appear to offer the support the family needs.

The arrangement may also be less expensive than organising several professional workers to cover different periods.

I understand why a family might choose it.

But needing affordable care does not make unlimited working hours lawful.

An older person’s needs can change unexpectedly. Someone who initially required help with meals may later need assistance moving around the house or getting out of bed.

The family then faces a choice.

It can increase the support provided by relatives or other services. It can also reassess whether the existing arrangement remains suitable.

What it cannot reasonably assume is that the live-in worker’s responsibility automatically expands without limits.

The caregiver’s need for rest is not separate from the older person’s welfare.

A tired worker may struggle to provide reliable care. The household also needs a clear plan for emergencies and tasks requiring qualified nursing staff.

An ageing Germany will need more care

Germany’s demographic structure is changing.

More people are reaching ages at which they may need assistance with everyday life, while families face pressure to provide support alongside paid employment.

I examined part of this wider demographic problem in Germany Is Growing Older: Who Will Support Its Pension System?.

The question of long-term care is different from pensions, but both concern how Germany supports an ageing population.

Migrant workers already play an important role.

Some arrive through agencies. Others establish their own contractual relationships with families.

Germany cannot address the sector’s difficulties by treating all these workers as one legal category.

It needs clearer information about working arrangements and better ways to protect those who are employees.

The issue also connects to the broader importance of employment terms, discussed in German Employment Contracts: 10 Clauses Foreign Workers Should Check Before Signing.

But the paperwork is only part of the problem.

The real test comes when the duties inside the household change and nobody is available to take over.

Who takes over when the caregiver stops working?

A family considering live-in support needs to know what assistance the older person actually requires.

Can the person remain safely alone for several hours? Will help be needed overnight? Are there tasks that require trained nursing staff?

Those questions should shape the care arrangement before anyone signs a contract.

Agencies need to explain the worker’s duties and the arrangements for rest periods.

Families need a reliable plan for the hours when their employed caregiver is not working.

Workers need to know whom they can contact when duties exceed what was agreed.

There is no reason to assume that every household wants to exploit the person providing care.

But good intentions cannot replace proper staffing.

The Bulgarian caregiver’s dispute began with a contract for 30 hours a week and allegations of much longer obligations.

Germany’s 2026 survey now shows how often the respondents faced extended hours and interrupted nights.

The question is no longer whether one person can remain physically present in a house for 24 hours.

It is who will provide care when that person is entitled to stop working.

A household that cannot answer that question has not yet planned for genuine round-the-clock support.