Notice Period: Table & § 622 BGB

What is the notice period?

The notice period is the time between receiving a dismissal (Kündigung) and the day on which the employment relationship actually ends. It applies to every ordinary dismissal, regardless of whether you or your employer gives notice. Everything else keeps running during the period: you work (or are released from work), your salary is paid, holiday accrues, and social insurance continues.

The period is set out in § 622 BGB. The law distinguishes three situations: the probationary period (2 weeks), the basic period (4 weeks to the 15th or the end of the month), and the extended periods for the employer, which grow step by step with your length of service up to 7 months.

There is one exception: with summary dismissal for good cause, the employment relationship ends immediately, with no notice period at all. However, high hurdles apply. Everything else on this page relates to ordinary dismissal with notice.

If you have just received a dismissal, by the way, the notice period is only one of two clocks now running. The second is much shorter: you can generally only challenge the dismissal itself within 3 weeks of receipt. What to do now is summarised under Received a Dismissal: What Now?

Table: notice periods under § 622 BGB

The table below shows the statutory notice periods your employer must observe, depending on how long the employment relationship has existed:

"To the end of a calendar month" means: the period must be able to run its full course, and the employment relationship only ends on the last day of the month in which the calculated end of the period falls.

Example (long length of service): Klaus has been with the company for 23 years. His dismissal reaches him on 10 March. The longest tier applies: 7 months to the end of a calendar month. The calculated period ends on 10 October, so the employment relationship only ends on 31 October. Salary, holiday entitlement and social insurance continue for over 7 months.

Important: Time before your 25th birthday counts. The former rule in § 622 para. 2 sentence 2 BGB, under which years of employment before the age of 25 were disregarded when calculating the period, no longer applies following the Kücükdeveci decision of the European Court of Justice (judgment of 19 January 2010, C-555/07), on grounds of age discrimination. Someone who started at 18 and is dismissed at 30 has 12 years of service, not 5.

How is length of service counted?

What matters is the legal existence of the employment relationship with the same employer, counted from the agreed start date. Time spent in an apprenticeship at the same company generally counts, as does time spent on parental leave or extended sick leave, because the employment relationship continues during these phases. In the case of a transfer of business under § 613a BGB, the new owner generally also takes over your existing years of employment. The decisive moment for the applicable tier is when the dismissal is received.

Your notice period vs. your employer's notice period

The extended periods in the table only apply in one direction: they bind the employer. As an employee, you remain subject to the basic period under § 622 para. 1 BGB: 4 weeks to the 15th or the end of a calendar month, regardless of whether you have been with the company for 2 or 25 years. This applies unless your employment contract or an applicable collective agreement provides otherwise.

In practice, however, many employment contracts contain a clause under which the extended periods apply to both sides. In that case, you too must observe the longer period if you give notice yourself. It is worth checking your contract before making your own plans.

This asymmetry is deliberate: the long periods protect your planning security after many years of loyal service, without tying you down for longer than necessary. And it is precisely this protective function that makes the notice period so valuable in negotiations, more on that below.

How much severance pay would be realistic in your case: work it out in 2 minutes with our severance calculator.

Notice period during the probationary period

During an agreed probationary period, which may last at most 6 months, either side can give notice with a period of 2 weeks (§ 622 para. 3 BGB). Two particularities apply:

• The period runs day-for-day: there is no fixed end date such as the 15th or the end of the month.
• Notice can be given up to the last day of the probationary period, even if the employment relationship then only ends after it expires.

Example (probationary period): Tim has been with the company for 4 months, and a 6-month probationary period has been agreed. His dismissal reaches him on 3 June. The 2-week period runs day-for-day: the employment relationship ends on 17 June, in the middle of the month.

Note the difference between the probationary period and the qualifying period: the 2-week period depends on an agreed probationary period. General protection against dismissal under the Protection Against Dismissal Act (Kündigungsschutzgesetz) only applies after a 6-month qualifying period, regardless of whether a probationary period was agreed. More on this under Probationary Period in Employment Law.

Deviations through employment contract and collective agreement

The periods under § 622 BGB form the statutory framework. Deviations are possible, but only within clear limits (§ 622 paras. 4 to 6 BGB):

• Collective agreement: a collective agreement may deviate from the statutory periods, even downwards. If such a collective agreement applies to your employment relationship (through union membership or a reference clause in your employment contract), its periods take precedence over the statutory ones.
• Employment contract: an individual contract generally may not set a shorter period for the employer than the statutory one. Longer periods, however, are permitted and common. Narrow exceptions allowing shorter periods exist only for temporary staff in the first 3 months and in small businesses generally employing no more than 20 people (subject to minimum limits there).
• Protective rule: your own notice period may contractually never be longer than the employer's (§ 622 para. 6 BGB). A clause that binds you for longer than the employer is invalid.

In practice this means: first work out your statutory period from the table, then check whether your employment contract or a collective agreement contains a rule that is more favourable to you (or that differs, in the case of a collective agreement). As a rule, whichever period puts you in a better position as an employee facing dismissal by the employer applies.

When does the notice period start running?

The period begins with the receipt of the dismissal, not with the date shown at the top of the letter, and not with the day the employer signed it. The dismissal is received as soon as it reaches you in a way that, under normal circumstances, allows you to take note of it.

• Personal handover: received immediately, upon handover.
• Placed in your letterbox: generally received on the day it would normally be expected to be collected from the box. Whether you actually read the letter is irrelevant.
• Holiday or illness: even if you are away, the dismissal is generally still received once it is placed in your letterbox. Receipt does not automatically shift.

Important for validity: a dismissal must be in written form with an original signature (§ 623 BGB). A dismissal by email, text message or messenger is invalid in form and starts neither the notice period nor the deadline to file a claim.

For the calculation itself: with the 4-week basic period, count 28 calendar days forward from the day of receipt and check whether the next reachable end date is the 15th or the end of the month. With the extended periods, count the full months from receipt and round up to the following end of the month. If the calculated end of the period falls on a weekend or public holiday, this does not change the end date, since the 15th and the end of the month are fixed calendar dates.

Note the date of receipt as precisely as you can (photo of the envelope, witnesses, incoming post log). Two deadlines depend on this date: the end of your employment relationship and the 3-week deadline to file a claim.

Wrong or too-short a period in the dismissal letter

In practice, employers frequently calculate the period incorrectly, for example by overlooking an extension tier or failing to count time before the 25th birthday. What applies then?

Under the case law of the Federal Labour Court, a period calculated too short generally does not make the dismissal invalid. An ordinary dismissal is, in case of doubt, to be interpreted as taking effect on the next permissible date. A dismissal "as of 31 July", for example, then becomes a dismissal as of 30 September, if that is the correct date.

But be careful, there is a trap here: if the intended end date is not clearly established through interpretation, or if you want to challenge the dismissal as a whole, you generally must still file a claim within the 3-week deadline from receipt of the written dismissal (§ 4 KSchG). Never rely on a mistake in the period correcting itself "automatically". You can find out exactly how much time you have left using the unfair dismissal claim deadline calculator.

A mistake in the period is also often a good sign: whoever calculates the period incorrectly has frequently also cut corners elsewhere (works council (Betriebsrat) consultation, social selection, reasoning). Such mistakes are exactly the leverage in an unfair dismissal claim, which very often ends in a settlement with severance pay.

Notice period and severance pay: your period is worth money

The notice period is relevant to severance pay in two ways:

• First, as ongoing salary: the employment relationship continues until the period ends. A period of 4, 6 or 7 months means 4, 6 or 7 gross monthly salaries that you are entitled to anyway, plus holiday and social insurance.
• Second, as negotiating leverage: if your employer wants to let you go earlier, for example via a termination agreement or a quick settlement, they generally have to buy out the time value of the period. The longer your period, the more expensive an early end becomes for them, and the stronger your position.

As a guide for the level of severance pay, the rule of thumb of 0.5 gross monthly salaries per year of employment has become established. It is not a statutory entitlement, but a negotiating anchor that draws on, among other things, § 1a KSchG. Depending on how error-prone the dismissal is and how negotiations go, results below or well above this are possible. What influences the amount in detail is explained under Severance Pay Amount.

Example: Anna has been with the company for 10 years and earns €4,000 gross per month. Her statutory notice period is 4 months to the end of a calendar month. If her dismissal reaches her on 15 May, the employment relationship only ends on 30 September: until then, she is entitled to just over 4 months' salary, around €16,000 gross, from the notice period alone. As a guide for severance pay, the rule of thumb additionally gives 0.5 x 10 x €4,000 = €20,000. More on this scenario: Severance Pay After 10 Years.

Work through your own example: the severance calculator gives you your personal guide figure in 2 minutes.

Notice period and unemployment benefit

The notice period also plays an important role for unemployment benefit, especially if you shorten it voluntarily:

• Suspension of entitlement (§ 158 SGB III): if your employment relationship ends through a termination agreement or settlement before the ordinary notice period expires, and you receive severance pay for this, your unemployment benefit can be suspended for at most until the day the period would otherwise have regularly ended. This does not make you lose your entitlement, but you receive the money later.
• Benefit suspension period (Sperrzeit): this is to be distinguished from the benefit suspension period of generally 12 weeks, which is a risk if you end your employment relationship yourself without good cause, for example by signing a termination agreement without thinking it through. Details and exceptions under Benefit Suspension Period for Unemployment Benefit.
• Duty to register (§ 38 SGB III): register as a jobseeker at the latest 3 months before your employment ends. If your period is shorter than 3 months, the rule is: within 3 days of learning the end date. This registration is compulsory even if you are challenging the dismissal in court.

For context: unemployment benefit I (Arbeitslosengeld I) amounts to around 60% of your standardised net pay, or around 67% if you have a child. Every month in which a shortened period means you receive suspended or no unemployment benefit instead of salary genuinely costs real money.

Practical consequence: severance pay in exchange for shortening the period needs to be calculated carefully. What you gain in severance pay can partly be eaten up again by suspended unemployment benefit. As a rule: either use up the full notice period or have its value paid to you, never give both away.

How can we help you?

Have you received a dismissal and want to know whether the period, form and reasoning are correct, and what severance pay is realistically achievable? That is exactly what we are here for: we review your case together with lawyers specialising in employment law and negotiate the best possible outcome for you.

We carry the risk: strictly success-based, at no upfront cost, paid only on success. Start with an initial assessment using our severance calculator, it only takes 2 minutes.