Demography, Employment & Migration

The analysis shows that data skills are required in many job advertisements in Germany and are becoming more relevant. This is a positive sign for the data economy in Germany, as companies increasingly realize the potential of data and try to implement it in their own operations. However, a growing demand for employees with data skills poses challenges for companies in the future in view of the existing skills gap, especially in digitalization professions. Policymakers should intervene by, for example, taking measures that make it easier for companies to recruit foreign workers.

In this article, the authors provide new evidence on regional income inequality in Germany, using tabulated income tax statistics for the period 1998-2016. Other than related work on regional income inequality in Germany which analyzes income or wages at the county level, we can characterize inequality at the municipality level. As there currently exist 401 counties in Germany, but more than 10,000 municipalities, our analysis is conducted at a much more fine-grained level.

During the recent crises, governments around the world have spent large amounts of public funds to limit the impact of economic downturns on citizens and corporations. The resulting pressure on public funds is highlighting the crucial need to improve tax compliance.

How successful have efforts been to socially integrate Syrian migrants in Germany? What factors influence social integration? Together with researchers from Harvard and Meta, we address these questions in a new research paper working with de-identified data from Facebook.