Zur Rückwanderung von Arbeitskräften in die ländlichen Regionen Deutschlands: deskriptive Befunde

This working paper describes return migration of Germany’s labor force and its relevance for regional migration balances. These analyses were conducted as part of the research project “The spatial mobility of workers throughout individual working lives - Analyses for rural areas in Germany" by the Thünen Institute of Rural Studies and the Institute for Employment Research (IAB). The project receives funding from the Federal Rural Development Scheme (BULE). Our analyses are based on data from the IAB’s integrated employment biographies (IEB). According to our results for Germany’s labor force, return migration accounts for 27 percent of all migration across regions in the timeframe of 2004 to 2017. However, the importance of return migration for the overall volume of migration varies across different groups of individuals. Highly qualified individuals exhibit below average shares of return migration (25 percent). The group of individuals with the highest share (32 percent) is the group of 30- to 34-year olds. The significance of return migration measured as the share of return migration to overall in-migration is relatively high for rural areas (31 percent). Its relevance is particularly pronounced for regions that are located further away from agglomerations, especially rural areas in Eastern Germany and those with less favorable socio-economic conditions. 50 percent of all rural regions record a positive migration balance from return migration (more workers who move back to the considered region than workers, who return from the considered region to a former location of residence), which contributes to an improvement of these regions‘ overall migration balances. These contributions can lead to a reduced negative migration balance or turn the overall migration balance positive. However, the latter is almost exclusively observed in Western German regions and mostly in areas with favorable socio-economic conditions.