What drives Lorraine employees to Luxembourg? “A very clear wage interest,” reveals a study by INSEE Grand Est, published today. If he still doubted it, INSEE has just confirmed, studying for the first time everyone’s tax returns, that when they leave to work in Luxembourg, the citizens of Lorraine, Moselle and Meurthe-et-Moselle in the lead, come looking a salary. , “on average double” than their living area.
The rush to Luxembourg has begun and the cross-border population has been increasing for five years. In 2020, 86,100 residents of the Moselle and Meurthe-et-Moselle living areas chose to take the plunge. But since 2018, Luxembourg has adopted an average of 20% of new frontier workers from these two departments each year.
The closer you live to the border, the faster you will become a frontier worker
+ 15,822 in 2019, +15,722 in 2019 and + 17,766 in 2020. Three quarters of them had a job in France the previous year. Not surprisingly, this wave of employee displacements goes hand in hand with “a logic of proximity to the border” and the famous Sillon Lorrain. Clearly, the closer you live to the border or to a communication axis, highway, station … the more you are a candidate for cross-border work.
For example, one in three frontier workers reside in the Cattenom community of municipalities, one in five in the Thionville agglomeration, “a significant number” live in Metz. The further you get away from the border, the less visibly tempted you are to go and work there.
However, there are also new border residents in this battalion, inhabitants of Longwy, Pays-Haut, Grand Nancy, the Orne valley or the Pont-à-Mousson basin …
If the Mosellans are in the lead, + 44,000 new cross-border commuters in five years, followed shortly by Meurthe-et-Mosellans, +16,500 in five years, the Meuse and the Vosges are respectively in fourth and fifth place in the ranking of departments or suppliers of new frontiers.
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Salaries almost doubled
The “wage motivation of frontier workers is very clear” according to INSEE. The wage comparison ratio fluctuates on average between 1.25 and 2.04. Clearly, cross-border commuters earn twice as much as their neighbors who work in France. Higher skilled jobs and higher diplomas of frontier workers partly explain this phenomenon, according to the Institute of Statistics.
However, if you earn a better living in Luxembourg than in France, French employees are much less well paid there than Belgian and German cross-border commuters. French cross-border commuters earn around € 47,000 per year, which is € 11,100 less than their Belgian colleagues and € 11,600 less than their German colleagues, a study by Staec, the national statistics and studies institute, revealed this summer. economies of Luxembourg.
And again, the closer you get to the border, the greater this ratio. The record is held by residents of the Pays Haut Val d’Alzette living area with salary multiplied by 2.04, as in the area of Cattenom and its surroundings (2.03) and at least in the area of Stenay and Val Dunois (Meuse). by 1.25.
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Luxembourg, a country that wishes you well?
And beyond the salary? Luxembourg clearly shows its desire to welcome cross-border workers. On the linguistic side, for example. If the Luxembourg language is required in 35% of vacancies in Luxembourg, the country offers cross-border workers who have worked for more than 6 months in the Grand Duchy, linguistic leave of 80 to 200 hours, paid with the average salary, 50% by the employer and the rest by the state.
France and Luxembourg are working side by side to simplify tax procedures for frontier workers and the companies that employ them. Access to care in cross-border commuter families is now being surveyed, which everyone can access online, to understand their specific needs and provide answers.
Since March 2020, Luxembourg has made its public transport free for all travelers. Good news, which unfortunately does not solve the hard life of cross-border commuters who go there via the A31, totally saturated or take the train to go to work and regularly experience the railway kitchens …
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