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

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.