Notice Period: Table & § 622 BGB

What Is the Notice Period?

The notice period (Kündigungsfrist) is the time between receiving a dismissal and the day your employment actually ends. It applies to every ordinary dismissal (ordentliche Kündigung), regardless of whether you or your employer gives notice. Everything continues during this period: you keep working (or are released from duty), your salary keeps being paid, holiday entitlement accrues, and social insurance contributions continue.

The period is set out in § 622 BGB. The law distinguishes three situations: the probation 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 in stages with your length of service up to 7 months.

There is one exception: with summary dismissal (fristlose Kündigung) for good cause, your employment ends immediately, with no notice period at all. However, strict requirements apply. Everything else on this page concerns ordinary dismissal with notice.

If you’ve just received a dismissal, by the way, the notice period is only one of two clocks now running. The second is much shorter: you generally only have 3 weeks from receipt to challenge the dismissal itself. Find out what to do now, in brief, at Received a Dismissal: What to Do?

Table: Notice Periods under § 622 BGB

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

"To the end of a calendar month" means the period must be able to run its full course, and your employment 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 worked at 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 end of the period is 10 October, so his employment only ends on 31 October. Over these 7 months, his salary, holiday entitlement and social insurance all continue.

Important: time before your 25th birthday counts too. The former rule in § 622 para. 2 sentence 2 BGB, under which years of employment before age 25 were disregarded when calculating the notice period, has no longer applied since the European Court of Justice’s Kücükdeveci ruling (judgment of 19 January 2010, C-555/07), due to age discrimination. Anyone who started at 18 and is dismissed at 30 has 12 years of service, not 5.

How Is Length of Service Counted?

What counts is the legal existence of the employment relationship with the same employer, calculated from the agreed start date. Periods of training at the same company generally count too, as do periods of parental leave or extended illness, since your employment continues to exist during these phases. In a business transfer under § 613a BGB, the new owner generally also takes on your previous years of service. The decisive moment for determining the applicable tier is when the dismissal is received.

Notice Period for Employees vs. Notice Period for Employers

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, whether you’ve 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 stating that the extended periods apply to both sides. In that case, you too must observe the longer period if you resign yourself. It’s worth checking your contract before making your own plans.

This asymmetry is intentional: the law uses long periods to protect your planning security after many years of loyalty to the company, without tying you down longer than necessary. It’s precisely this protective function that makes the period so valuable in negotiations, more on that below.

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

Notice Period During Probation

During an agreed probation period, which may last no more than 6 months, either side can give notice with a 2-week period (§ 622 para. 3 BGB). Two particularities apply:

• The period runs to the exact day: there’s no fixed end date like the 15th or the end of the month.
• Notice can be given up to the last day of the probation period, even if your employment then only ends after the probation period has expired.

Example (probation period): Tim has worked at the company for 4 months, with an agreed 6-month probation period. His dismissal reaches him on 3 June. The 2-week period runs to the exact day: his employment ends on 17 June, in the middle of the month.

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

Deviations via 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 to shorten them. If such an agreement applies to your employment (through collective bargaining coverage or reference in your 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 quite common. Narrow exceptions for shorter periods exist only for temporary staff during the first 3 months and in small businesses with generally no more than 20 employees (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 ties you down longer than your 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 more favourable rule for you (or a different one, in the case of a collective agreement). As a rule, the period that puts you in a better position as an employee in the event of dismissal by your employer applies.

When Does the Notice Period Start Running?

The period begins with receipt of the dismissal, not the date stated at the top of the letter, and not the day your employer signed it. Dismissal is received as soon as it reaches your sphere of control such that, under ordinary circumstances, you could be expected to take note of it.

• Personal handover: receipt occurs immediately, at the moment of handover.
• Posted in your letterbox: receipt generally occurs on the day the box could customarily be expected to be emptied. Whether you actually read the letter is irrelevant.
• Holiday or illness: even if you’re away, the dismissal is generally still received once posted. Receipt doesn’t automatically shift to a later date.

Important for validity: a dismissal requires written form with an original signature (§ 623 BGB). A dismissal by email, text message or messenger app fails to meet this form requirement and triggers neither the notice period nor the claim deadline.

For the calculation itself: for the 4-week basic period, count forward 28 calendar days from the day of receipt and check whether the next reachable end date is the 15th or the end of the month. For 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 doesn’t change the end date, since the 15th and the end of the month are fixed calendar dates.

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

Incorrect or Too-Short Notice Period in the Dismissal Letter

In practice, employers often miscalculate the notice period, for example by overlooking an extension tier or failing to count time before your 25th birthday. So what applies then?

Under Federal Labour Court (Bundesarbeitsgericht) case law, a notice period calculated too short generally does not make the dismissal invalid. In case of doubt, an ordinary dismissal is interpreted as intended to take effect on the next permissible date. So a dismissal "to 31 July" becomes, for example, a dismissal to 30 September, if that’s the correct date.

But watch out, there’s a trap here: if the intended end date isn’t clear from interpretation, or if you want to challenge the dismissal as a whole, you generally must file a claim within the 3-week deadline from receipt of the written dismissal (§ 4 KSchG). So never rely on a notice-period error correcting itself. To see exactly how much time you have left, check our unfair dismissal claim deadline calculator.

A notice-period error is often a good sign, too: an employer who miscalculates the period has frequently been sloppy elsewhere as well (consultation with the works council (Betriebsrat), selection criteria, justification). Errors like these are exactly the leverage in an unfair dismissal claim, which very often ends in a settlement including severance pay.

Notice Period and Severance Pay: Your Notice Period Is Worth Money

The notice period matters twice over for your severance pay:

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

As a benchmark for the amount of severance pay, the rule of thumb of 0.5 gross monthly salaries per year of employment has become established. It’s not a statutory entitlement but a negotiating anchor, based partly on § 1a KSchG. Depending on how error-prone the dismissal is and how negotiations go, results below or significantly above this figure are possible. For what influences the amount in detail, see Severance Pay Amount.

Example: Anna has worked at 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, her employment only ends on 30 September: until then she’s entitled to just over 4 months’ salary, around €16,000 gross, from the notice period alone. As a benchmark 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: our severance calculator shows you your personal benchmark figure in 2 minutes.

Notice Period and Unemployment Benefit

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

• Suspension of entitlement (§ 158 SGB III): if your employment ends through a termination agreement or settlement before the ordinary notice period expires and you receive severance pay for it, your unemployment benefit can be suspended for up to the day the period would otherwise have ended. You don’t lose the entitlement, you just receive the money later.
• Benefit suspension period (Sperrzeit): distinct from this is the suspension period of generally 12 weeks that threatens if you end your own employment without good cause, for example by signing a termination agreement without thinking it through. Details and exceptions at Benefit Suspension Period for Unemployment Benefit.
• Duty to register (§ 38 SGB III): register as a jobseeker at least 3 months before your employment ends. If your notice period is shorter than 3 months, you must register within 3 days of learning the end date. This duty applies even if you’re bringing a claim against the dismissal.

For scale: unemployment benefit I amounts to roughly 60 % of standardised net pay, or around 67 % if you have a child. Every month in which a shortened notice period leaves you with suspended or no unemployment benefit instead of salary therefore costs you real money.

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

How Can We Help You?

Have you received a dismissal and want to know whether the notice period, form and justification are correct, and what severance pay is realistic? That’s exactly what we’re 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: purely success-based, with no upfront cost, paid only on success. Start with an initial assessment using our severance calculator, it only takes 2 minutes.