How Internal Migration Shapes Apprentices’ Life Satisfaction

For young people entering vocational training in Germany, moving to a new region may feel like a life-changing leap—but a large longitudinal study suggests that relocation itself does not automatically make apprentices happier. Instead, the biggest boost to life satisfaction comes from entering vocational education and training (VET) in the first place. Migration adds a substantial short-term advantage only under particular conditions, especially when apprentices move to urban areas or gain access to higher-status occupations.

The findings come from an analysis of Germany’s National Educational Panel Study, which has followed thousands of young people from school into further education and employment. Rafael Warkotsch, Nicolai Netz, Nico Stawarz and Alexandra Wicht examined whether apprentices who moved across regional labour markets experienced different life-satisfaction trajectories from those who stayed near home. Their results challenge the popular assumption that migration is broadly associated with greater well-being. For young adults navigating the tightly connected transitions from school to training, work and independence, the timing and purpose of a move appear to matter more than the move itself.

Germany offers an unusually informative setting for studying this question. Its dual VET system combines classroom education with workplace training and is closely linked to regional labour markets. Each year, hundreds of thousands of young people enter dual or school-based training programmes, most of which last two or three years. Although apprentices can often find training close to home, many must search beyond their local labour market to secure a suitable position. In the researchers’ sample, 18.2 percent of apprentices moved from one regional labour market to another for training. Their journeys averaged about 230 kilometres, with a median distance of 250 kilometres—far enough to represent a meaningful change in daily life, social surroundings and independence.

The researchers used data from 16,425 students who were in grade 9 during the 2010–11 school year and were invited to participate in 14 survey waves between 2010 and 2022. After restricting the data to people who entered their first VET spell and removing cases with incomplete information, the main analysis included 2,797 individuals and 17,788 observations. At each survey wave, participants rated their overall life satisfaction from zero, meaning completely unsatisfied, to ten, meaning completely satisfied. The team linked these responses to detailed monthly records of education and residential histories, allowing them to compare satisfaction before training with satisfaction during the first, second and third years of apprenticeship.

This design allowed the researchers to track changes within the same people rather than simply comparing different groups. That distinction is crucial because people who move are not randomly selected from the population. They may differ from stayers in motivation, family support, career ambitions, personality, health or financial resources. The study therefore used individual fixed-effects panel regressions, a statistical method that controls for characteristics that remain stable within a person over time. The models also accounted for age groups, survey periods, calendar months, training interruptions and panel dropout. In practical terms, the analysis asked whether a person’s life satisfaction changed differently after moving for VET than it changed for comparable periods before and during training.

The clearest pattern was not a migration effect but a training effect. Across both movers and stayers, life satisfaction rose sharply after entry into VET. The average increase was roughly 0.7 points in the descriptive trajectories and about 0.4 points in multivariate models that controlled for individual and period differences. Satisfaction then declined slightly toward the end of training. Apprentices who moved began with somewhat lower average life satisfaction than those who stayed, but the two groups gradually converged. Once the researchers accounted for individual fixed effects, there was no statistically significant or substantial average difference between migrants and stayers during the VET period.

That result suggests that entering a structured post-school pathway may be more important for well-being than the geographic move used to reach it. Vocational training can provide a clearer identity, daily routine, social contacts, workplace experience and a route into the labour market. For many young adults, successfully leaving school and securing a training position may resolve uncertainty that had weighed on their well-being. Migration, in this context, may function less as an independent source of happiness than as a tool for accessing the next stage of life. The move can be costly and stressful, involving rent, travel, separation from family and friends and the challenge of adapting to an unfamiliar environment. Those costs may offset the benefits of mobility when the move does not produce an especially valuable educational or lifestyle outcome.

The average result concealed important differences. Apprentices who moved into occupations with higher socioeconomic status experienced a modest additional gain in life satisfaction during their first year of training. The estimated increase was 0.18 points for a one-standard-deviation rise in the occupational-status score, measured using the International Socio-Economic Index of Occupational Status. The advantage disappeared in the second and third years. This pattern is consistent with the idea that moving can feel especially rewarding when it delivers a training position that matches or exceeds a young person’s ambitions. Yet the initial boost may fade as the new occupation becomes familiar, expectations change or attention shifts toward other goals.

The largest short-term effect appeared among apprentices who moved to urban or urbanised districts rather than rural regions. During the first training year, their estimated life-satisfaction premium was 0.56 points, with a standard error of 0.160 and a probability value of 0.001. Urban destinations may offer more than training and employment opportunities. They can provide access to cultural events, social networks, entertainment, public transport and other amenities that are particularly important during the transition to adulthood. Moving away from the parental household may also allow young people to experiment with an identity and lifestyle of their own. However, the urban advantage weakened in later years and was no longer statistically significant, indicating that it was mainly an early boost rather than a durable transformation in well-being.

The study found no statistically significant evidence that migration had smaller effects among apprentices from regions with poor local VET opportunities. In fact, their estimated gains were slightly larger, although the difference was not reliable enough to support a firm conclusion. One possibility is that young people leaving areas with few suitable training positions experience the move as overcoming a major disadvantage. The satisfaction of securing a desired occupation despite limited local opportunities could compensate for the financial and social costs of leaving. Conversely, those from regions with abundant training options may only move when the destination offers a particularly strong benefit, such as a prestigious occupation or an attractive urban lifestyle.

Additional analyses tested whether the findings depended on modelling choices, the definition of migration or the treatment of missing data. The researchers used a multiverse analysis, repeating the analysis under alternative assumptions about the sample, mobility distance, missing values, key variables and potential selection effects. Longer-distance moves tended to produce somewhat more positive estimates than moves to adjacent labour-market regions. The positive occupational-status effect was strongest in complete-case models, although its direction remained consistent when missing values were handled through multiple imputation. The urban effect also depended on how destinations were classified: the estimated advantage was smaller when only large cities were counted, suggesting that urbanised districts—not only major metropolitan centres—may be responsible for much of the association.

The researchers also compared the motivations of apprentices moving to rural and urban destinations. Among those moving to rural areas, gaining a higher-status occupation was significantly associated with a first-year increase in life satisfaction. For those moving to urban areas, occupational status was not a significant predictor. This contrast hints at two different forms of mobility. Some young people may be willing to give up urban amenities to secure a more prestigious career path, while others may prioritise the opportunities and lifestyle associated with urban settings even when the occupation itself offers less status. In both cases, the meaning of the move depends on what the apprentice is trying to accomplish.

The rapid fading of the benefits is compatible with the psychological idea of a hedonic treadmill: after a major improvement, people adapt to their new circumstances and redirect their aspirations. A new city can initially feel liberating, but housing costs, social isolation or difficulty integrating may become more apparent over time. Likewise, a high-status training position may produce an early sense of achievement before new comparisons and ambitions emerge. The researchers caution that their data cannot fully separate the effect of migration from the effect of leaving the parental home, nor can they capture every feature of a destination, such as rent levels, green space or cultural opportunities. Family circumstances, health and relationships could also influence both the decision to move and subsequent satisfaction.

Even with those limitations, the study offers a broader lesson for research on migration and happiness. A move should not be treated as an isolated event detached from the life stage in which it occurs. Migration during midlife may be driven by income, housing or family formation, whereas migration at the end of school may be bound up with education, identity, independence and entry into the labour market. For German apprentices, the decisive event appears to be the successful transition into VET; moving is usually a means of making that transition possible. Yet when relocation opens the door to a higher-status occupation or the amenities of an urban region, it can deliver a striking, if temporary, lift in well-being. The findings suggest that the emotional payoff of migration is not found simply in changing place, but in gaining access to the opportunities and life experiences that a new place makes possible.