The East and West German labour markets are still characterized by large differences in migrant shares and thus workforce diversity. While in West Germany immigration was a rather established mechanism in order to recruit additional workers especially in the 1960s and early 1970s, East Germany has still only a small share of migrants among the workforce. For many years, young migrants in West Germany struggled to take up vocational education and training (VET) positions and therefore had to take up jobs with lower task levels more often. With remarkable demographic changes in the East, the numbers of East Germans who took up VET positions in the West fell considerably from 2007 onwards. We analyse to what extent this decline in East German apprentices in the West led to growing opportunities for migrant youth in West Germany. For this purpose, we use employment registry data from the Federal Employment Agency as well as population data from the Federal Statistical Office. We consider small-scale information on NUTS-3-levels and control for occupational differentials, as well as apprenticeships occupation. Thus, we compare regional occupation clusters where competition between East German and foreign youth took place. © The several contributors 2025. The moral rights of the authors have been asserted. All rights reserved.
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