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Study: East German university graduates want to go to the city
Many university graduates from eastern Germany are drawn to Hamburg. Photo: Axel Heimken/dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
What comes after graduation? For many students from eastern Germany, the answer is clear: move. Preferably in the big cities – but the high rents are also a deterrent.
Packing moving boxes with a diploma in your pocket: After graduating from university, many young people continue to move away from East Germany.
As a study published by the University of Maastricht and the job placement portal Jobvalley shows, the federal states of Saxony-Anhalt, Brandenburg and Thuringia are in a particularly bad position.
In Saxony-Anhalt, the so-called emigration balance is 63.1 percent and thus about as high as in a survey from 2019. For every 1000 graduates there, there are only 369 prospective job starters who want to stay in Saxony-Anhalt or want to go there. In Thuringia and Brandenburg, bloodletting of young professionals is similarly high, in Saxony and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania it is lower.
City-states and south particularly popular
On the other hand, two city-states are very attractive for university graduates: Hamburg has an immigration balance of 115.4 percent – roughly speaking, twice as many university graduates from Germany want a job in the Hanseatic city as there are graduates there. Berlin is also popular (plus 67.7 percent). However, both values were even higher in the 2019 study. Bavaria (plus 15.2 percent) and Baden-Württemberg (14.3 percent) also have positive balances.
According to the information, around 22,000 people nationwide took part in the online surveys for the “Fachkraft 2030” study series. One of the questions was: “In which federal state and in which city would you like to work after your studies?”
Looking at the figures, Jobvalley boss Eckhard Köhn says that Berlin, Hamburg and the industrially strong south benefit from well-trained university graduates, while locations in the new federal states often get nothing. “Although they bear the high education costs for the students.”
Rising rents in the city
In addition, Köhn points out that the strong appeal of Hamburg and Berlin has waned somewhat for young professionals – in the 2019 study, their migration balances were higher. Why is that? Köhn cites higher rents in these cities as one reason. The rent is “a huge cost” for the young professionals. “Both Hamburg and Berlin are experiencing explosive price increases here.” According to him, this contributed to the fact that some university graduates did not want a job in these cities.
The study is based on an online survey in which around 22,000 students and recent graduates took part nationwide in March and September 2021. The study published in 2019 is in turn based on a survey from September 2018 – so there is a gap of three years.