Anyone who is a civil servant works for the state – right? That's true in the vast majority of cases.

A good three decades after its privatization, the successor companies to the Federal Post Office still employ thousands of civil servants. At the turn of the year, Deutsche Post still had approximately 18,000 civil servant employees, the logistics company stated upon request. More than 90 percent of them work in the Post & Parcel Germany division – primarily mail carriers, parcel couriers, and sorters, but also administrative staff.

The Bonn-based company is known on the stock exchange as Deutsche Post AG, but in everyday business it has since changed its name to DHL. The globally positioned corporation has more than 200,000 employees in Germany, meaning the proportion of civil servants is well below ten percent.

The proportion of civil servants is declining year by year, as no one has been appointed as a civil servant at the post office since 1995. At the end of 2014, there were just over 45,000 civil servants, and by the end of 2019, there were just under 30,000. Those postal workers who were last appointed as civil servants in 1994 and who remain with the company for their entire careers will retire in 2043—then the issue of postal civil servants will be history.

At the turn of the year 2024/25, Deutsche Telekom still employed around 9,700 civil servants, all full-time positions. At the end of 2020, the number was around 18,400, and at the end of 2015, around 32,000. According to the data, the proportion of civil servants among Telekom employees in Germany was 13 percent.

Postbank, which handles branch operations for the German Post Office in Postbank financial centers, also still has civil servants among its ranks – but hasn't disclosed the number for several years. In 2019, there were approximately 3,400 full-time employees and 900 part-time employees who were civil servants. At that time, the bank paid €86 million into the civil servants' pension fund. Deutsche Telekom and Deutsche Post also have similar financial expenditures to accommodate civil servants' pension entitlements.

The Federal Post Office was privatized in 1995, creating Deutsche Post, Deutsche Telekom, and Postbank. Since then, no civil servants have been appointed to these companies (Postbank is now part of Deutsche Bank).