71% of employees in Germany who are open to changing jobs would switch employers for a shorter commute. 75% find companies more attractive if they subsidise commuting costs. These figures come from the Jobwechsel-Kompass by the KÖNIGSTEINER Gruppe and stellenanzeigen.de for the second quarter of 2026, a representative survey of 1,080 employees.
What stands out is less the size of these figures than what they refer to. They concern one specific part of everyday working life: the journey to work and what it costs. This is exactly where many benefit strategies have a blind spot. Mobility offers appear as one line among many in a job ad, even though they address something employees deal with every day and that costs them measurable money.
In this article, you’ll find out what the evidence shows about the impact of mobility benefits, where the data is weaker than often presented, and what this means for job ads and benefit design.
The Jobwechsel-Kompass regularly surveys how willing people in Germany are to change jobs and offers a snapshot of employees’ career ambitions. The latest survey, from the second quarter of 2026, shows that 28% of all respondents can generally imagine switching employers. Among younger people, the share is even higher: 41% among 18- to 29-year-olds and 37% among 30- to 39-year-olds.
For this group of potential job switchers, the commute plays a major role. 75% say the commute is an important criterion for or against an employer, and 71% would change employers for a shorter commute. Cost can be the deciding factor: 54% say rising energy and mobility costs affect their willingness to switch.
So it’s no surprise that 75% find companies more attractive if they subsidise commuting costs. For 36%, an employer-funded Deutschlandticket, Germany’s nationwide monthly subscription for local and regional public transport, would be a possible reason to change jobs. A good third would therefore consider switching because of a single mobility offer.
The Jobwechsel-Kompass is a regular study by the Königsteiner Gruppe and stellenanzeigen.de that tracks job-switching intentions and trends in the German labour market. It was conducted by the research institute bilendi; respondents had an average age of 44.9.
A survey by Allianz Direct of 2,005 drivers found average commuting costs of €121.48 per month, with considerable variation. In Brandenburg, employees spend an average of €149.52 a month on travel to work. In Bremen, it’s just €78.54, mainly due to the length of the commute, as the Mobilität in Deutschland study shows. At around 24 to 28 kilometres one way, Brandenburg has one of the longest commutes of any German state, taking about 1 hour and 4 minutes a day. Bremen’s one-way distance is much shorter at around 10 kilometres, but city traffic and public transport journeys give it the longest average commuting time in the country, at around 1 hour and 15 minutes a day. Across Germany, employees spend around 55 minutes per working day getting to work and back. The car remains the most used mode of transport, at 59.9%.
The commute affects practically everyone. Whether someone uses the canteen, takes up a sports offer, or signs up for a company pension depends on their life stage, where they live, and personal preference. Everyone has to get to work, though, and everyone pays for it. A subsidy towards these costs therefore reaches the entire workforce, and it reaches them at a point where money goes out every month.
A €50 monthly subsidy, tax-free as a benefit in kind, covers just over 40% of average commuting costs. Under Section 8(2) sentence 11 of the German Income Tax Act (EStG), benefits in kind up to this monthly limit are free of wage tax and social security contributions, provided the limit is not exceeded. For the Deutschlandticket, which normally costs €63, an employer subsidy can reduce the employee’s share. With a subsidy of at least 25%, the ticket price itself also drops by 5%, as transport associations discount the job ticket version. For employees who can switch from the car to public transport, the monthly calculation shifts considerably.
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An analysis by the Bertelsmann Stiftung together with the German Economic Institute (IW) shows how far competition for applicants has shifted towards additional benefits. The study analysed 6.5 million online job ads, supplemented by a representative survey of 1,755 young people aged 14 to 25.
73.9% of all ads analysed now include at least one benefit. Since 2019, mentions have tripled or quadrupled depending on the category, and mentions of company tickets have more than doubled. What was a differentiator just a few years ago is now part of every job ad’s basic equipment.
When three out of four ads list benefits, simply mentioning them loses its signalling effect. For employers, the question becomes whether an offer actually makes a difference in everyday life. The study looks at the apprenticeship market and only partly applies to skilled professionals and managers, but the same pattern of benefit inflation can be observed in other segments too. This brings a metric to the fore that rarely comes up in benefit discussions.
No job ad says how many employees actually use a benefit. Yet for recruiting impact, it’s the more meaningful number. New hires notice within their first few weeks when an advertised offer turns out to be cumbersome. One that is widely used comes up in conversations, reviews, and recommendations to friends, and so has an effect well beyond the ad.
At the Deutsche Apotheker- und Ärztebank (apoBank), employees received paper meal vouchers for years. Around half the workforce used them. After the switch to a digital mobility budget, the usage rate rose to over 95%, with more than 2,500 users. At the same time, administrative effort fell from 112 to 9 person-days a year. The offer became more accessible and, as a result, was taken up far more widely.
Babbel, a leading global language learning platform based in Berlin, also reaches 95%, again after a switch and, by its own account, almost twice the rate of its previous offering. Munich-based MERKUR PRIVATBANK achieves a 93% usage rate for its mobility budget across around 400 employees. At the Lufthansa Innovation Hub, all 70 employees have signed up and 80% use the budget regularly. Across the documented cases, rates range between 80% and 100%.
DACHSER shows particularly clearly how strongly mobility pulls compared with other offers. The logistics group runs seven benefits in a single programme, two of which are mobility benefits. These two account for 60% of all sign-ups, with more than 6,800 registered employees at over 70 locations. Two out of seven offers attract the majority. For companies that need to prioritise their benefits, this is a useful indication of where demand really lies.
Anyone introducing mobility benefits at production sites on the edge of town or in rural areas usually has to deal with one objection: without decent public transport, it won’t work, and the topic is only relevant for city offices anyway. The objection is rarely backed by evidence, because few companies analyse their locations separately.
Berlin-based HelloFresh has shown how it can be done. The meal kit company offered the same mobility budget at its Berlin headquarters and at its production sites in Barleben and Verden. With success: almost the entire Berlin workforce signed up (95%), and a large share also opted in at Barleben (90%) and Verden (81%).
Freedom of choice makes the difference. A budget that can be used for fuel, EV charging, or a company bike just as easily as for a public transport ticket doesn’t depend on a tight timetable. With a pure public transport job ticket, the gap between locations would very likely have been larger. If you’re recruiting at a site without good public transport links, a subsidy towards travel costs is the stronger message than a public transport ticket alone.
83% of German companies offer company cars. The figure comes from WTW’s International Car Policy Survey, which covered 359 companies in Germany alone, and at first glance it suggests the mobility question has largely been answered.
A look at the workforce paints a different picture. According to analyses of the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), around 5% of employees in Germany have a company car they can also use privately, roughly 1.7 million people. A company can therefore run a fleet and still have no mobility offer for 95 out of 100 employees.
The distribution is also highly uneven. According to the Verkehrsclub Deutschland (VCD), almost one in three people with a gross monthly income of €6,000 or more has a company car, compared with 1% of those earning up to €2,000. Advertising the company car in recruiting therefore targets a small group that is mostly well paid already.
Even for this group, the offer usually ends with the car. According to the same WTW survey, 28% of companies also give their company car drivers a public transport subsidy, 23% support bicycles, and 20% e-bikes.
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Get infoAnyone considering a job factors in the commute. How long will it take, what will it cost, is there parking, is there any public transport at all? Applicants run this calculation anyway, usually before they read the rest of the ad. Hardly any ad answers it.
Transport links, parking, and the mobility subsidy should therefore be presented together, in the place where applicants look for them. For locations outside metropolitan areas, this is often more relevant than the list of other benefits.
When describing the benefit itself, precision pays off. A keyword in a list leaves open what’s behind it. A statement like “€50 a month, freely usable for the Deutschlandticket, fuel, EV charging, car sharing, or bike rental” makes the amount tangible and shows that the offer works regardless of where someone lives. At locations with poor transport links, that’s exactly the signal that matters.
Above any wording, though, is whether the offer delivers what the ad promises. A benefit with a low internal usage rate shouldn’t be advertised, because new hires notice the gap in their first weeks. Your own usage data is therefore the most honest filter for what goes into the ad.
One argument usually goes unused. Attractive mobility offers at German companies are almost always tied to a position or level of seniority. A budget open to everyone is the exception. For skilled employees without management roles, who make up most of the workforce, it’s often the only mobility benefit within reach.
Since 2026, a further dimension has turned mobility benefits from a nice-to-have into a pay issue. The EU Pay Transparency Directive defines pay as basic salary plus any other remuneration employees receive directly or indirectly, in cash or in kind. Company cars, job tickets, and mobility budgets all fall under this definition.
This has two concrete consequences for recruiting. In the application process, employers will have to tell applicants the starting pay or pay range before the interview, and asking about previous salary will no longer be allowed. In reporting, the distribution of benefits in kind will have to be disclosed, broken down by gender. Unequally distributed mobility benefits thus become visible and will need to be justified.
Germany let the transposition deadline of 7 June 2026 pass, and a national implementing law is not expected before early 2027. For public employers, however, the directive has applied directly since 8 June 2026.
With benefits, there’s often a considerable gap between what a job ad promises and what employees actually experience. At apoBank, it was 45 percentage points, measured across the same workforce with a comparable benefit. If you want to know whether an offer pulls its weight in recruiting, your own usage data will tell you more than preference surveys.
The commute is the lever with the widest reach. It costs an average of €121.48 a month, affects every role from the warehouse to the executive floor, and a subsidy towards it is felt directly in net income. For 71% of employees open to changing jobs, it’s a reason to look elsewhere.
There is no reliable figure for how many additional applications a mobility benefit generates. Anyone who quotes one should be asked for the source. What can be said is this: an offer that almost everyone uses comes up in conversations, reviews, and recommendations to friends. One that hardly anyone uses remains a line in the job ad.
The Pay Transparency Directive adds a second perspective. Once mobility benefits are reported as part of pay, how they are distributed matters as much as how attractive they are. A company that sets up an offer open to the entire workforce today has already answered that question.
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