For anyone relocating to Bremen from overseas, here is the data that matters before you commit: income, jobs, housing, connectivity, taxes and who lives here, straight from German Regionalstatistik, the Zensus 2022 and the Breitbandatlas.
Bremen concentrates people, work and cost into a small area, as a big city does. Nationally it ranks 388th of 400 German districts on unemployment, from lowest to highest.
How Bremen compares
How Bremen sits among Germany’s 400 districts (Kreise); building-land prices are recorded for 394 of them. Each bar shows the percentile; hover for the underlying figure.
Why people move to Bremen
Bremen is a small state as well as a city, and its economy is more specialised than its size suggests. Aerospace is the centre of it: Airbus builds wing components here, OHB runs satellite programmes from the city, and the Ariane rocket upper stages are assembled in Bremen. Mercedes-Benz operates one of its largest car plants in the east of the city, and the port business, though the deep-water traffic has moved downriver to Bremerhaven, still anchors a large logistics sector.
The University of Bremen is young by German standards, founded in 1971, and has built a strong reputation in marine science and robotics. The old city is genuinely old: the town hall and the Roland statue on the market square are on the UNESCO list, and the Schnoor quarter behind it is a surviving fragment of the medieval town.
Bremen is compact and cheap to live in by the standards of a German city, which is its main practical argument. The airport is unusually close — a tram ride from the centre — though it serves mostly European routes; Hamburg is about an hour away by train for anything intercontinental.
On neighbourhoods: Schwachhausen and Horn are the leafy, established end. Das Viertel, around Ostertorsteinweg, is the young and slightly scruffy centre of the city’s social life. Findorff and Neustadt are the sensible middle. Vegesack and the north are cheaper and further out. The honest caveat: Bremen’s labour market is narrower than in the Rhine-Ruhr or the south, and unemployment runs above the national rate. If your field is not aerospace, logistics, science or the public sector, the choice of employers is limited.
Jobs and the economy
75% above DE avg
Work and residents are fairly evenly matched in Bremen: 302,219 jobs at local workplaces in 2025, 516 per 1,000 residents. Those jobs are spread across 24,485 registered businesses (2024), a sense of how broad the employer base is. The unemployment rate is 11.0% in 2025 (German average 6.3%), roughly one in 9 of the local workforce.
Full-time employees living here take home a median gross wage of €3,900 a month (about the national median), before tax and contributions. Read it alongside, not instead of, the disposable income above: one is gross pay for workers, the other is what each resident has to spend. Source: Bundesagentur für Arbeit, 2024.
Cost of living and housing
6% above DE avg
6% below DE avg
The average net cold rent (Nettokaltmiete) is €7.75 per m², about 6% above the German average of €7.28. It reflects existing tenancies from the 2022 census; expect to pay above it on a new contract. Each resident has €26,870 of disposable income a year (252nd highest of 400 German districts). That puts it about 6% below Germany’s €28,453 average. On its own that number tells half the story; the local cost of living does the rest. Building plots go for around €276 per m², the 100th highest of 394 districts with a recorded price, the starting price of the ground itself, beneath every local rent. The median German district is around €132 per m². Scale it up and a 70 m² flat runs to about €542 a month cold at that rate (2022 sitting tenancies; new contracts sit higher).
The local housing market
What you are renting into, on the 2022 census: 63.0% of homes are rented rather than owner-occupied; the vacancy rate is 3.2% (roughly in balance); the average home measures 83 m². The stock is 304,022 homes in 120,970 buildings, about 2.5 per building, so this is mostly houses rather than flats. In the latest year 213 new dwellings were completed against 159 permits, which hints at how much new housing is actually coming through.
Who lives in Bremen
The 2022 census picture: age bands and how households are made up.
Age distribution
The age mix here leans young and working-age. 28.4% of residents are aged 25 to 45, the bracket most relocations fall into, with 14.3% under 15 and 20.6% at 65 or older. A few more strokes from the 2022 census: 32.1% of residents have a migration history (20.4% are foreign nationals); 48.2% of households are single-person; 42.4% of adults hold an Abitur / university-entrance qualification. If you are relocating from another country, you would be in plenty of company day to day. School rolls come to 61,014 pupils. Daycare places get easier to find as children get older: about 0.8% of under-1s, 32.2% of 1 to 2 year olds and 63.4% of 2 to 3 year olds have a place, so finding care for an infant is harder than for a toddler.
Internet & connectivity
The share of homes able to get each speed (Breitbandatlas, end of 2025). Gigabit may come via fibre or upgraded cable; true fibre (FTTB/H) is listed on its own.
On fixed broadband, 99% of households can order 100 Mbit/s or more, and 98% can reach gigabit (1,000 Mbit/s) speeds (Breitbandatlas, end of 2025). Only part of that is fibre: 84% of households can get FTTB/H, and upgraded cable carries the rest. On mobile, 5G reaches 100% of households. Working remotely as a newcomer is straightforward; the connection is rarely the problem here.
Where Bremen is in Germany
Recorded crime
Police-recorded offences in the district, per 100,000 residents.
Police recorded 13,559 offences per 100,000 residents in 2025 (the Häufigkeitszahl), 166% above the German district median of about 5,096. These are police-recorded cases, not convictions; transit hubs, motorways and busy centres lift the figure because much of it involves visitors rather than locals. It is not a verdict on how safe the area is to live in. Source: Polizeiliche Kriminalstatistik, BKA 2025.
Local taxes
Local tax barely registers for a typical newcomer. The trade-tax multiplier (Gewerbesteuer) is 460%, but it only touches you if you register a business: the tax office sets a base amount, the municipality multiplies it. Tenants meet the property tax (Grundsteuer B) indirectly, via the monthly Nebenkosten. We quote no figure: the 2025 reform reset every rate and the new ones are still settling.
Moving in and out
growing
The headcount in Bremen is rising. In 2024, the registers recorded 28,316 arrivals against 24,677 departures, a net of +3,639. More arrive than leave, which keeps steady pressure on the rental market. 3,855 people were naturalised here in 2024, a naturalisation rate of 2.9%. Some 37,705 people here hold or are seeking protection status, about 64.3 per 1,000 residents, the combined asylum, refugee and humanitarian total, with Ukrainians counted here since 2022. Turnout at the most recent election was 79.1%.
Just arrived in Bremen? Sort these first
With 28,316 people moving into Bremen in a single year, internet installation slots and bank appointments fill up fast. Get the essentials lined up before you arrive.
FAQ: relocating to Bremen
How expensive is Bremen to live in?
The average net cold rent is €7.75 per m² (6% above the €7.28 German average), from existing 2022 tenancies, so a new lease runs higher. Disposable income per resident is €26,870 (252nd highest of 400 German districts). That puts it about 6% below Germany’s €28,453 average. Remember it is a nominal figure and ignores what life actually costs here.
What is the job market like in Bremen?
There are 302,219 jobs at workplaces in Bremen, 516 for every 1,000 residents once commuters are counted, with unemployment at 11.0%, roughly one in 9 of the local workforce, against 6.3% across Germany.
Is Bremen family-friendly?
By the figures: 14.3% of residents are under 15, local schools serve 61,014 pupils, daycare reaches about 63.4% of two-to-three-year-olds.
Is the internet good enough to work from home in Bremen?
99% of households can get a fixed line of at least 100 Mbit/s, 98% gigabit of which 84% true fibre (FTTB/H); 5G mobile reaches 100% (Breitbandatlas, end of 2025), so remote work is fine at most addresses.
How built-up is Bremen?
With about 1,797 residents per km², Bremen is firmly on the urban side.
Other cities in Germany
Source: Regionaldatenbank Deutschland (regionalstatistik.de), Statistische Ämter des Bundes und der Länder; supplementary data via Destatis GENESIS-Online. Housing, household, education and migration figures from the Zensus 2022. Broadband coverage from the Breitbandatlas (© MIG, BMDV). Recorded crime from the Polizeiliche Kriminalstatistik (BKA, 2025). Median full-time gross wages from the Bundesagentur für Arbeit (2024). Years per field: population 2024, jobs and unemployment 2025, income 2023, businesses, building activity and land 2024, naturalisations 2024, childcare 2025; rent, vacancy, ownership, dwelling size, single-person households, education and migration 2022 (Zensus); broadband end of 2025 (Breitbandatlas). · How we built this ›