Legal student work — 140 days, Werkstudent and Minijob

If you work as a Hilfskraft (HiWi) — a student research or teaching assistant employed directly by your own university (marking assignments, running tutorials, assisting a professor's research, working in a university library or lab) — those hours do not count against your 140 full / 280 half day annual limit at all. You can work as many hours as your HiWi contract and your studies allow. This makes a HiWi position the least risky, most flexible job a Bangladeshi student can hold, on top of being genuinely useful for your CV and for professor references you'll need for a PhD or a strong job application later.

The €556/month Minijob threshold rises whenever the minimum wage rises (it's set at 10 times the statutory minimum wage per week, divided into a monthly figure) — always check the current figure on minijob-zentrale.de before assuming last year's number still applies. A Werkstudent job, by contrast, has no fixed pay ceiling, which is why it's the financially and professionally better goal once you're a semester or two in.

These figures are set by law following recommendations from the Minimum Wage Commission and can be revised — confirm the current rate on bundesregierung.de or the Bundesagentur für Arbeit before relying on it for your budget. Most student jobs in cafés, retail and warehouses pay at or slightly above the statutory minimum, while HiWi and Werkstudent roles in engineering, IT and finance typically pay well above it, often €14–20/hour depending on the field and city.

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  HiWi / student assistant roles at your own university

  Check your faculty's job board (often called Stellenboerse) and ask professors directly after class — many HiWi jobs are never advertised publicly.

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  Warehouses and logistics (Amazon, DHL, DPD)

  High demand for Minijob and Werkstudent shifts, especially around Christmas and in industrial cities like Frankfurt, Cologne and Leipzig — no German required for many roles.

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  Restaurants, cafés and delivery (Lieferando, Wolt)

  Common first job while German is still weak, particularly in student-heavy neighbourhoods near campus.

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  Retail chains (REWE, Lidl, dm, Rossmann)

  Regularly hire Minijobbers for stocking and checkout shifts; basic conversational German (A2/B1) usually expected.

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  Werkstudent roles in your degree field

  Advertised on the university career portal, LinkedIn, Xing and company career pages (Bosch, Siemens, SAP, BMW, and thousands of Mittelstand firms) — apply from your second semester once you have some coursework to show.

Minijobs in retail, warehouses and delivery are commonly done with A2–B1 German or sometimes none at all in large international warehouses. Any Werkstudent role that touches customers, documentation or team meetings usually expects B1–B2 German at minimum, even in an "English-friendly" tech company, because day-to-day office chatter, HR paperwork and internal systems are often still in German. If your target is a Werkstudent job in your own field, treat reaching B1 German by the end of your first year as seriously as your coursework — it's the single biggest unlock for both pay and job quality.