# Where foreign populations grew, unemployment fell

> Does migration follow work? Pooled across 359 cities the link looks absent at 0.12 — but Germany is −0.41 and Italy −0.34 once the countries are separated.

Published 2026-08-04 · Maksim Streltcov · https://immigrationdb.com/research/migration-work-direction/

Question: in cities where the foreign population grew, did the job market get better or worse? Answer: better — clearly, inside every country large enough to measure, and invisibly when the countries are pooled. Across 359 cities the pooled coefficient between foreign-population change and unemployment change is 0.12 , which reads as no relationship at all. Split by country it reverses and strengthens: −0.41 in Germany across 108 cities, −0.34 in Italy across 74, −0.15 in France across 45, −0.10 in Spain across 79. Negative is the favourable direction here: the cities that gained the most foreign residents are the ones whose unemployment rate moved down the most. What this cannot tell you is which came first. That question is beyond this data, and the article does not answer it in either direction.

## What we measured
## What the data shows
## Where it breaks down
## What this means if you are moving
## Limits
## Method
## Sources

## Questions

**Can these data show whether migration follows jobs?**

No. Each city is reduced to the change between its first and last annual observation, so the analysis cannot date a turning point, test a lag, or say which trend moved first. It can show that the two changes are related within countries, and it cannot say which one caused the other.

**Do cities that gain foreign residents have worse unemployment?**

The opposite, inside every country large enough to measure. Spearman's correlation between foreign-population change and unemployment change is −0.41 in Germany across 108 cities, −0.34 in Italy across 74, −0.15 in France across 45 and −0.10 in Spain across 79. Negative means the cities with the largest foreign-population growth are the ones where unemployment moved most favourably.

**Why is the pooled number so different from the country numbers?**

Pooling 15 national systems with different unemployment definitions and different periods produces 0.12, which reads as no relationship. Every large country inside it is negative. The pooled figure describes the mix of countries in the sample, not any city in it.

**Which cities combine the largest foreign-population growth with falling unemployment?**

Gera, up 819.7% between 2011 and 2022 with unemployment falling from 11.2% to 7.6%, then Vilnius at 561.1% with 13.1% to 4.7%, and Görlitz, Plauen, Erfurt and Magdeburg. Most are eastern German cities growing from a very small foreign-resident base.

**Why were 85 cities excluded?**

Eighty of them draw on a foreign-population series that changes definition or contains a corrupt year — every Dutch city in the sample is affected. Five Slovak rows report zero overlapping observations with a last year earlier than their first, which is impossible under the inclusion rule.