Enlarge image
People waiting at the Berlin-Alexanderplatz S-Bahn station
Photo: Carsten Koall / Getty Images
The number of commuters in Germany increased in 2021 despite the corona pandemic and the obligation to work from home.
A good 3.5 million workers did not work in the federal state in which they lived last year - 150,000 more than in the previous year, the "Rheinische Post" reported on Wednesday, citing data from the Federal Employment Agency (BA).
The number of long-distance commuters grew by 4.5 percent in the Corona year 2021 compared to the previous year.
According to the data, more than one in ten employees subject to social security contributions has a place of work in a different federal state than their place of residence.
Among the countries in which a particularly large number of people come from outside to work are
North Rhine-Westphalia (461,000 so-called commuters),
Baden-Württemberg (426,000),
Bavaria (425,000),
Hesse (408,000)
as well as the city-states of Hamburg (368,000)
and Berlin (366,000).
Bremen had the highest proportion, where a good 41 percent of employees lived outside.
Most commuters – employees who leave their federal state for work – were in Lower Saxony (454,000), Rhineland-Palatinate (338,000), Brandenburg (305,000), Schleswig-Holstein (244,000) and Saxony-Anhalt (141,000).
In Brandenburg, more than 30 percent work outside the state borders.
Commuting routes within a federal state, e.g. from other Bavarian municipalities to Munich, or within the city limits are not covered by this statistic.
The data also does not reveal whether the route between the two locations was actually driven.
This could also include employees who moved to the country to work from home while the employer's address is still officially their place of work.
However, this should also lead to additional routes if more presence is required again after the pandemic.
Union sees expensive housing as the main reason
According to estimates by the Bauen-Agrar-Umwelt industrial union (IG BAU), more and more employees are actually being forced to drive for hours. "Not everyone can do home office - many people have to put up with long commutes to get to work," said union boss Robert Feiger of the "Rheinische Post". Distances of more than 100 kilometers are "anything but a rarity" for construction workers.
The union sees expensive rents and house prices as the main reasons for the further increase in the number of commuters.
A decisive contribution against the environmentally harmful "commuting madness" is the creation of affordable living space in the places where people want to work and live, said Feiger.
He welcomed the federal government's plan to build 400,000 new apartments per year - including 100,000 subsidized social housing.
For these permanent price controls are necessary.
“The rule must be: once social housing, always social housing.
We don't need cheap rents with expiration dates."
ak/dpa/AFP