Increasing re-migration of workers to eastern Germany

Abstract

"In recent times, less and less persons employed in eastern Germany are migrating to the west. At the same time, more and more eastern Germans are coming back to their home regions - among them, many young, well-educated and qualified workers. Current maps of Germany illustrate these shifts. The reasons for these returns are manifold, and in this way re-migration has become a hope for many regions in eastern Germany in respect to overcoming demographic problems. This applies all the more because, in comparison to those that have not migrated to the western part of Germany, eastern Germans who return to their home regions are distinctly younger and because they for the most part live in rural areas. This is the result of the analyses undertaken for this collection of articles which for the first time presents the return migration flows of employees subject to social security contributions both at the level of the district and comprehensively. The basis is the Employee History File (BeH) of the Institute for Employment Research (IAB), in which the employment biographies are linked to data on places of residence. Because of the difficult situation with data, there have not been any surveys for the whole of Germany on the corresponding migration relationships between western and the eastern regions. In order to grasp the most recent developments, two five-year periods are compared to each other below." (Text excerpt, IAB-Doku)

Cite article

Nadler, R. & Wesling, M. (2013): Zunehmende Rückwanderung von Arbeitskräften nach Ostdeutschland. In: Nationalatlas aktuell No. 7 (12.2013) 11, p. 1-18.