Working in summer versus term time

The rules, country by country

These are the rules as commonly applied, and immigration law in this area changes often — Hungary rewrote its immigration act with effect from 2024, and Finland's limit moved from 25 to 30 hours in 2022. Confirm on the authority's own page before you rely on a number, and read the part-time work rules article alongside this one.

The three models

Denmark: a hard seasonal switch. Twenty hours in term, full time in the three summer months. This is the most useful summer rule of the nine, and it is what makes a Danish summer genuinely worth planning for.

Finland: an annual average. Thirty hours a week averaged across the year, which means a heavy summer and a light autumn are allowed as long as the average holds. Work that is part of your degree — a required placement, a thesis project in a company — is not counted at all.

Sweden: no cap, and a catch. There is no legal limit on hours for a student residence permit holder. What there is instead is a study-progress requirement at renewal, and a student who worked a great deal and earned few credits is exactly the profile that fails it. "No limit" is not permission to work full time all year.

What a summer actually pays

Full-time seasonal work at or near the minimum wage:

• Southern and eastern Europe — roughly EUR 900-1,600 gross a month in Greece, Cyprus, Malta, Bulgaria, Hungary and much of Italy, with tourism and agriculture the main employers.
• The Nordics — considerably more per hour, but summer jobs are competitive, usually go to people with the local language, and are often filled by March.

After tax and social contributions the net figure is lower, sometimes considerably. See tax on student work and minimum wage and student pay by country for the arithmetic.

⚠️ A full summer of work does not pay a year of tuition anywhere in the nine. Three months of full-time minimum-wage work covers several months of living costs. It is a real contribution to your budget and it is not a funding plan. Any consultancy that tells you otherwise is describing a country that does not exist.

The trade-off nobody mentions

Summer is also when the things that build a career happen: the internship, the thesis fieldwork, the summer school, the language course. A student who works three summers in a restaurant graduates with money and no European work history; a student who does one paid internship graduates with less money and a reference from a European employer.

For a master's student in particular, one summer internship is usually worth more than one summer of shift work. See finding an internship in Europe.

Things that get students into trouble

1. 1Working over the limit. It is recorded — your employer reports your hours and your contributions to the tax authority, and the immigration office can see them at renewal. This is not a rule people quietly break.
2. 2Cash-in-hand work. No contract means no proof of income for a renewal, no insurance if you are injured, no recourse if you are not paid, and a breach of the terms of your permit.
3. 3Assuming the term dates. "Outside term time" is defined by the university's official calendar, not by when your last exam finished.
4. 4Forgetting the second job. The limit is on total hours, not hours per employer.

Before you take a summer job

1. 1Check the rule on the immigration authority's own website for your country and permit type.
2. 2Get a written contract that states the hours and the hourly rate.
3. 3Register for the tax number you need before you start — personal and tax numbers.
4. 4Look at the internship option first, and take the shift work if the internship does not come. Not the other way round.