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The EU boasts the largest single labor market globally; EU citizens enjoy the freedom to take up work anywhere within the common market. Despite considerably diverse labor market regimes across the EU, little is known about how local labor market settings influence spatial labor mobility within the bloc. By integrating cross-country harmonized labor mobility data from the EU Labor Force Survey with the Kaitz index, a standardized measure of local minimum wage (MW) impact, I investigate the relevance of MWs for low-skilled labor mobility in Europe. Utilizing both a fixed effects model and the Arellano-Bond dynamic panel instrumental variable estimator on a sample of 103 NUTS-2 regions across six EU countries from 2003 to 2019, my analysis reveals that more substantial MWs correspond to elevated local labor inflows: On average, a one percent increase in the Kaitz index associates with a 0.03 percentage point higher worker inflow rate to the given region, indicating a Kaitz index elasticity of low-skilled labor inflow of about 0.18. This results holds for several alternative model specifications and robustness tests. Moreover, I observe substantial cross-country heterogeneity, and find particularly pronounced mobility responses for urban areas and among younger people.
