Intra-EU labour mobility stilldriven by east-west movements
Structural free movement and residence are a basic freedom of all EU citizens and the expectation is that cross-border labour mobility can contribute to a better functioning of European labour markets.
In 2017, 12.4 million EU28 citizens of working age (15–64) lived in another EU Member State (3.8% of the total working-age population of the EU28), up from 7.9 million in 2007. Although this is a significant increase, when compared internationally even the higher 2017 value is low (for example, yearly inter-state labour flows in the US were seven times higher relative to the population size, see OECD (2016)).
more information in Benchmarking Working Europe 2019 - Chapter 2 Labour market and social developments