Being a long distance out-commuter or home employee in a rather peripheral region evidence of a German federal state

Stephan Brunow,Ramona Jost

Published 2023 in Review of Regional Research

ABSTRACT

Many firms in Germany are short of qualified workers, whereby East German regions are particularly affected because of the out-migration to West Germany after the reunification. This gives rise to an important debate for regional policy as the shortage of workers is a major challenge for each region and firm. In this context, out-commuters—workers who commute to work in another region—become an important group of employees to potentially satisfy local labour needs. In this study, we take a closer look at out-commuters in a particular eastern German region—the Federal State Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (MV)—and address the question whether out-commuters are a selective group of individuals working in e.g. occupations or industries that are rarely needed for labour market requirements in MV. Further, we focus on the wage differential between out-commuters and workers who are living and working in MV (home employees). The determination of the factors that explain this wage gap can provide new insights and a deeper understanding of the labour market in MV. This can provide a basis to work out potential strategies to attract the group of out-commuters for a workplace in MV to reduce the complained labour shortage. The derived evidence suggests that only few out-commuters can be recalled, as the labour demand in MV and the respective wage level are too low and the economic structure is too weak to sufficiently gain back out-commuters. Especially females suffer from the job-market weakness in MV.

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