An Analysis of Housing Policy Measures Aimed at Supporting Labour Flexibility in the Czech Republic

Comparison of internal migration rates among the Czech Republic and other countries EU, analysis of domestic migration for employment reasons in the CR according to the Czech Statistical Office data

An international comparison (using Eurostat data) indicated that the Czech Republic lags behind other advanced EU countries in the rate (volume) of domestic (internal) migration, especially in terms of the gross migration rate (which takes into account the total number of people immigrating and emigrating between regions in individual countries). However, it is important to note that for various methodological reasons a reliable international comparison is currently unfeasible. Measuring migration in Czech society based on changes in the registered permanent address of members of the population ignores a considerable amount of migration among people who migrate, often for the very purpose of job opportunities, but do not change their official permanent address. The indicator of the net migration rate, which takes into account the relative totals/sums of the migration balances (i.e. relative difference between the number of immigrants in and emigrants out of the region) for individual regions within a state, brings the Czech Republic closer to the level of some advanced EU countries (such as Austria and the Netherlands). This shows that although the total number of migrants out of the total population in the Czech Republic is very low compared to other countries, there are relatively significant inter-regional differences in the number of emigrants and immigrants.

Analyses of domestic (internal) migration based on migration data from the Czech Statistical Office (ČSÚ) reveal that a sharp decline was registered in the total rate of domestic migration in the Czech Republic between 1991 and 1996, and though after 1996 the rate of domestic migration began to rise again slightly, by 2004 it still had not reached the level it was at in the early 1990s. The Czech Statistical Office only has data available for the years between 1992 and 2004 for evaluating how domestic migration for employment reasons developed over the course of the years. The gross rate of labour migration declined up until 2000; it then rose slightly in 2001 and 2002, and in the final two years of the period under observation (2003 and 2004) slightly decreased again. According to ČSÚ statistics, only 5.2% of all the migration that occurred within the Czech Republic in 2004 was undertaken for employment reasons. The results of some sociological studies (see below for more details) indicate that 17% (according to the "CVVM 2003" survey; or 12% according to the "Housing Attitudes 2001" survey) of all respondents that reported having moved during their lifetime (or since 1960) did so because they changed their employer or their place of employment (or because they found new employment or moved closer to their place of employment or school). Although much these data may be distorted (biased) by error, data from various sources confirm that the rate of domestic migration, and especially the rate of domestic migration undertaken for employment reasons, is very low compared to rates in other advanced countries, and that over the course of the 1990s, that is, during the economic transformation, it decreased even further.

When the percentages of migrants categorized according to the level of highest completed level of education were weighted by the share of people with given level of completed education (according to Census 2001) it was found that, in the Czech Republic in 2001-2004, people with university education moved for employment reasons far more than any other group. During this same period, it was most often people aged 25-34 and people aged 16-24 that moved for employment reasons, or in other words, primarily young people. It was also men who moved more often than women for employment reasons during this period. When the percentages were weighted by marital status (according to Census 2001 results) it was found that during the period of observation it was primarily single and divorced people who moved for employment reasons.

In conformity with neo-classical economic theory it was possible to partly demonstrate, here just using simple statistical coefficients (bivariate and partial correlations), that the higher the average wage in a district that less statistically significant the rate of domestic emigration (the relative number of emigrants) out of the district. What also proved statistically significant was the negative relationship between domestic emigration from a district and the proportion of owner-occupied housing in the district, while controlling for the effect of the district's average wage. It was apparent that the higher the proportion of owner-occupied housing in the district, the less statistically significant the rate of domestic emigration for employment reasons was (the number of people who emigrated for employment reasons), while controlling for the effect of differences in average wages between individual districts.