Chemical industry tariff: Hesse
Wage table, working hours and special payments for the Hesse chemical-industry bargaining region.
Table of Contents
With the Rhine-Main region, Hesse is one of Germany's historically significant chemical and pharmaceutical industry locations. Tariff-wise, Hesse forms its own bargaining region, negotiated by HessenChemie and IGBCE, with its own pay figures that differ from neighboring regions.
The figures used here come from the WSI Tarifarchiv (April 2025). HessenChemie publishes its own collection of national framework agreements, but it doesn't contain a standalone, publicly accessible wage table for the upcoming increase steps or for special payments, as far as this research could confirm - so both areas remain marked open here.
Pay groups E1 through E13
E1 sits at 3,113 EUR a month in Hesse. E6, entry after completed vocational training, starts at 3,548 EUR and rises across four steps to 4,116 EUR after six years. The top commercial group E13 sits at 6,878 EUR - the second-lowest figure among the eleven bargaining regions with a commercial/technical split in this calculator.
Notably, E9 (starting at 3,565 EUR) sits below E8 (starting at 3,805 EUR) in Hesse, despite E9 formally being the higher group. That's not a data inconsistency - it reflects the different structure of the two groups: E9 marks entry into the commercial/technical track with its own, flatter starting step, before rising more steeply than E8 over the following years.
| Pay group | Occupational variant | ab 18. Lebensjahr | Anfangsstufe | nach 2 Jahren | nach 3 Jahren | nach 4 Jahren | nach 6 Jahren |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| E1 | einheitlich | 3,113.00 € | – | – | – | – | – |
| E2 | einheitlich | 3,253.00 € | – | – | – | – | – |
| E3 | einheitlich | 3,320.00 € | – | – | – | – | – |
| E4 | einheitlich | 3,364.00 € | – | – | – | – | – |
| E5 | einheitlich | – | 3,461.00 € | – | 3,548.00 € | – | 3,634.00 € |
| E6 | einheitlich | – | 3,548.00 € | 3,761.00 € | – | 3,938.00 € | 4,116.00 € |
| E7 | einheitlich | – | 3,678.00 € | 3,899.00 € | – | 4,119.00 € | 4,340.00 € |
| E8 | einheitlich | – | 3,805.00 € | 4,033.00 € | – | 4,300.00 € | 4,566.00 € |
| E9 | kaufmaennisch | – | 3,565.00 € | 3,902.00 € | – | 4,287.00 € | 4,817.00 € |
| E10 | kaufmaennisch | – | 4,108.00 € | 4,486.00 € | – | 4,919.00 € | 5,405.00 € |
| E11 | kaufmaennisch | – | 4,669.00 € | 5,088.00 € | – | 5,447.00 € | 5,986.00 € |
| E12 | kaufmaennisch | – | 5,015.00 € | 5,465.00 € | – | 5,915.00 € | 6,429.00 € |
| E13 | kaufmaennisch | – | 6,878.00 € | – | – | – | – |
What the pay groups describe
Each group ties to an actual task profile rather than an arbitrary number: E1 for work needing only brief instruction, E6 for the point a completed apprenticeship unlocks, and E13 for self-directed commercial or technical work resting on years of accumulated expertise.
Working hours
The contractual week is 37.5 hours, with a divisor of 163.1. At 30 contracted hours (80%), a full E6 entry wage of 3,548 EUR would come to 2,838.40 EUR of part-time base pay.
The 2026-2028 settlement
Hesse follows the national settlement: unchanged pay through end December 2026, then 2.1% in January 2027 and 2.4% in January 2028. Since no region-specific published table exists for Hesse for these two steps, the calculator shows them as derived - applied to the current figure, rounded to the nearest euro.
The optional three-month early adoption of a step is, as in every other region, only active after your explicit confirmation in the calculator.
Special payments: still open
No independently confirmed source exists for Hesse's own holiday pay or annual bonus, so the calculator shows Nordrhein's confirmed figures as the nationwide default pattern - clearly an assumption, not a value independently checked for Hesse. If in doubt, use your own payslip or ask your HR department.
The nationwide Zukunftsbetrag (23% of a month's pay since 2022) applies regardless of bargaining region, including Hesse, and is therefore available in the calculator.
Hesse compared with Rheinland-Pfalz
Compared with neighboring Rheinland-Pfalz, Hesse sits slightly lower at E1 (3,113 EUR versus 3,130 EUR), and noticeably lower at E13 (6,878 EUR versus 7,097 EUR). Both regions negotiate fully independently, despite their geographic closeness along the Rhine.
The annual view
Twelve monthly salaries at E6 entry level (3,548 EUR) total an annual gross of 42,576 EUR in Hesse. At E13 commercial (6,878 EUR), that's 82,536 EUR a year - more than Bayern (80,148 EUR) and Schleswig-Holstein (81,288 EUR), but less than Baden-Württemberg (88,716 EUR).
Hesse therefore sits in the lower middle of the eleven comparable regions at E13 - neither at the top like Baden-Württemberg nor at the bottom like Bayern.
Frequently asked questions
Why is there no state-registry confirmation for Hesse like for Nordrhein?
North Rhine-Westphalia runs its own state wage registry with a publicly accessible chemical-industry summary. No comparable, freely accessible document for Hesse was found during research for this calculator - HessenChemie's own publication doesn't include a standalone wage table for the upcoming increase steps.
What does it mean that E9 sits below E8?
E9 marks entry into the commercial/technical track with its own, flatter starting step - not a data inconsistency, but a deliberate structure that rises more steeply over the following years than E8 does.
Who this page is for
This table applies to the Chemische Industrie Hessen bargaining region. Use the interactive calculator for a full calculation including working hours, allowances and an optional net-pay estimate.
Sources
- https://www.bavc.de/presse/pressemitteilungen/2492-pi-25-03-26 (BAVC press release - 2.1%/2.4% increases, Jan 2027/2028, agreement duration, 300 EUR/year demographic-fund contribution)
- https://igbce.de/igbce/chemie26-faq-zum-abschluss-269474 (IGBCE FAQ - Zukunftsbetrag 23% national framework confirmation, early-adoption option)
- WSI Tarifarchiv, Chemische Industrie workbook: https://www.wsi.de/data/p_ta_tarife_chemische_industrie_2026.xlsx (sheet "HE | E", April-2025 wage step)