How are employers and employees in minijobs insured?

  • Updated:
  • Damjan Schmid

What the blog is about

  • Social insurance in Germany
  • Fees at a glance
  • Insurances in minijobs explained

What is social insurance and how high are the fees?

Social insurance is a compulsory insurance that employers pay for employees to protect them against important risks in life. Social insurance in Germany includes health, accident, nursing care, pension and unemployment insurance. The amount of the insurance contributions depends on the wage level of the employees.

Employers pay a maximum of 14.94% of contributions for minijobs in private households. Employees pay 13.6% of their earnings towards voluntary pension insurance, unless they have exempted themselves.

Overview of total contributions for minijobs:

What exactly do minijob insurances cover?

Unemployment Insurance
Unemployment insurance is not covered in the minijob. This means that employees are not entitled to unemployment or short-time working benefits.

Employer Insurance
Employers are automatically insured through the Knappschaft-Bahn-See employer insurance scheme. This includes coverage in case of illness and maternity protection.
Levy 1 (U1) entails continued payment of wages in the event of illness and amounts to 1.1% of the earnings of your household help. Levy 2 (U2) includes maternity protection pay in the event of employment prohibitions due to pregnancy/maternity as well as the maternity benefit supplement and amounts to 0.24% of the earnings of your household helper.
If these cases occur, you can get your expenses reimbursed proportionally (80% of the wage in the case of U1) or entirely (100% of the wage in the case of U2). You do not have any effort here, quitt takes care of the application for reimbursement for you.

Health Insurance
Employers only pay 5% of their employee’s earnings if the household help is compulsorily, voluntarily or family-insured in the German statutory health insurance.
Employees do not have their own health insurance coverage over this flat-rate contribution and are not entitled to sickness benefits.

Care Insurance
Care insurance is free of charge for employers and employees.

Pension Insurance
Employers must pay a compulsory contribution of 5% of the earnings of their household help to the pension insurance.
Employees, on the other hand, can decide whether to pay voluntary pension insurance contributions of 13.6% (at least 32.55 euros) of their salary or to be exempt.

Accident Insurance
Employers pay 1.6% of their household help’s earnings for coverage in the event of a work accident, commuting accident or occupational illness. The statutory accident insurance covers, for example costs for treatment, medication, care and transport or pays injury and transitional benefits. As an employer, you are thus insured in the event of an accident.

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