Last year, only 2,000 people from the eastern part of Germany relocated to the west.
After 23 years of being reunified, migration from east to west has slowed down so significantly that the great migration has been declared finished.
A new report shows that now as many people are moving to the east as they are to the west.
Since the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 and communism collapsed, nearly two million people left the former East Germany. They comprised 13.5% of the population and were driving largely by job opportunities and family reunification.
In the intervening time, the economy of eastern Germany has begun to catch up with its much wealthier western part.
Now for the first time, the government’s annual “Report on Germany Unity” states that only 2,000 more people left the east than moved there.
Previously, the annual figure was nearer 60,000 from the east heading west.
Life expectancy in the region is now the same as in the west. Schools and universities too are catching up.
As job prospects improve, unemployment has come down to 11%. It has not been this low since 1991, but is still twice the national average. But the average wage in the east is still only 80% that of the western average, and not one of Germany’s 100 largest companies has its headquarters in the east.
Other studies have indicated that there are now far more older people in the east, taken as a sign that the younger ones have already left.
Hans-Peter Friedrich, the interior minister, admitted that the “catching-up process must go on” but said: “We can see that in the past few years in the new German states, material affluence has significantly improved.”
Some believe it could take decades for the east to finally catch up with the west.
Germany’s 2011 census found the total population of the country to be 81.43 million, with 65.54 million in the west and 16.3 million in the east, including Berlin.
