Les dynamiques de l’emploi dans la Grande Région Saar-Lor-Lux
Les dynamiques de l’emploi dans la Grande Région Saar-Lor-Lux
Focusing on the SaarLorLux region, this article addresses the different employment, their contributions and challenges, while highlighting one of them in particular: cross-border working between Germany, Belgium, France and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.
As part of a study on employment dynamics in the SaarLorLux Greater Region, this article analyses the employment and unemployment situation there and highlights the phenomenon of cross-border working that is rife there. As unemployment is high in certain areas in the region, exchanges have developed between countries in the form of cross-border working, which, although it creates jobs, raises complex issues on the taxation and social fronts.
After a general introduction intended to set out the background to the research and enlighten the reader on the SaarLorLux Greater Region., the author has structured his work into two main sections.
In the first, there is a an analysis of employment and unemployment within the Greater Region. The author has subdivided this section into four main points with a variety of sub-points:
- Total active population: disparities between territories.
- Active population in employment: unequal economic development in the different territories
- Contrasting trends in the number of people in work
- Women's place in employment
- The population seeking work is increasing
- An increase common to all the territories between 1990 and 1996
- Separate trends in male and female unemployment rates
- Young people under the age of 25 more affected by unemployment
- Long-term unemployment
- Cross-border unemployment
- The main employment clusters: national or cross-border?
The second section contain an analysis, from different angles, of cross-border working, a complex and constantly increasing phenomenon. This section is subdivided into four main points with several sub-points:
- Cross-border worker, a status with a certain complexity
- The social protection of cross-border workers
- The tax regime of cross-border workers
- Employment of cross-border workers
- Over 64,000 people in Lorraine work abroad
- Where cross-border workers work
- One of the dimensions of cross-border working: cross-border temporary working
- The socio-demographic characteristics of temporary agency workers from Lorraine posted on the other side of the border
- Characteristics of temporary work agencies posting staff in Germany
- Cross-border working, a passing or a lasting phenomenon?
- Cross-border working in Luxembourg, a lasting phenomenon
- Cross-border working by Lorraine residents in Germany, a phenomenon that is expected to last
- Cross-border working on the Belgium-Lorraine border: shaky foundations
The article ends with a few general conclusions and a few perspectives.
The different analyses carried out by the author reveal a large number of disparities in unemployment in the different area of the Greater Region.
- These analyses show that the oldest working populations are in the German regions of the Greater Region.
- While the number of people with a job fell in in Lorraine and Saarland between 1990 and 1996, the opposite was observed in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, in the province of Luxembourg and the Trier district.
- At 3.2% and 5.5% respectively, the unemployment rate was lowest in 1996 in the territories of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and the Trier district. It stood at 11.2% in Lorraine at that time.
- Apart from in the two German regions, unemployment mainly affects women and young people aged under 25.
- Between 1990 and 1996, unemployment was increasing in all of the areas in question.
These different analyses have identified different employment clusters, clusters where the number of people working is higher than the number of people residing in them.
- The Saarbrücken and Luxembourg city clusters are the largest in the Greater Region. They attract the most workers, cross-border workers in particular, and are important factors in economic dynamism.
- In March 1999, cross-border workers accounted for more than one third of salaried workers in Luxembourg.
- Cross-border working is a real phenomenon in the Greater Region. It is intensified by the communications routes, the knowledge of common languages, the similarities or complementarities in the activities carried on, on either side of the borders between different territories.
- The regulation of this phenomenon has enabled it to develop as well as diversify to the point that it even applies to temporary working.
Rachid Belkacem (GREE Nancy 2 – IUT de Longwy), Monique Borsenberger (CEPS/INSTEAD, Differdange), Isabelle Piroth (CRP – Gabriel Lippmann, Luxembourg) and Véronique Soutif (EPML, Pont-à-Mousson)