If you are moving to Bochum from abroad, here is what you would actually be arriving into, on the official numbers: income, jobs, housing, connectivity, taxes and who already lives here. Every figure comes from German Regionalstatistik, the Zensus 2022 and the Breitbandatlas, not guesswork.
Bochum is a city through and through, and it behaves like one on every measure below. Unemployment is the headline: among the highest-unemployment in North Rhine-Westphalia.
How Bochum compares
How Bochum 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.
What living in Bochum is actually like
Bochum is a university town wearing a Ruhr city’s clothes. The Ruhr-Universität, opened in 1965, is one of the largest in Germany and gives the city a student population that shapes its rents, its nightlife and its politics. When Opel closed its plant in 2014 — the end of car-making in the city — the site was redeveloped as Mark 51°7, a technology campus that has drawn in research institutes and engineering firms, and the city now has a credible cybersecurity cluster around the university and the Max Planck Institute for Security and Privacy.
It is not a beautiful city. Bochum was flattened in the war and rebuilt quickly and cheaply, and it knows it. What it has instead is an unusually dense social life for its size: the Bermudadreieck in the centre is a few streets of bars that fill every night of the week, the Schauspielhaus is one of the more respected theatres in the country, and the musical Starlight Express has been running here since 1988.
Practically, everything is close. Essen, Dortmund and the rest of the Ruhr are fifteen to thirty minutes by train, Düsseldorf and its airport under an hour. Rents are low even by Ruhr standards, which is what makes it work as a base.
Neighbourhoods: Ehrenfeld is the pleasant, central, slightly expensive choice. Querenburg is student territory around the university. Weitmar and Stiepel in the south are quieter and greener, with the Ruhr valley on the doorstep. The honest caveat: incomes are modest and the graduate jobs are mostly elsewhere in the region. Plenty of people study in Bochum and then leave, and that churn is visible in the city.
Jobs and the economy
44% above DE avg
Work and residents are fairly evenly matched in Bochum: 150,864 jobs at local workplaces in 2025, 421 per 1,000 residents. Those jobs are spread across 14,338 registered businesses (2024), a sense of how broad the employer base is. Unemployment stands at 9.1% in 2025 (German average 6.3%), roughly one in 11 of the local workforce.
The median full-time worker here earns €4,150 a month gross (5% above the German median of €3,950), before tax and social 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
14% below DE avg
13% below DE avg
Net cold rent (Nettokaltmiete) averages €6.25 per m² here, about 14% below the German average of €7.28. Sitting tenants pay this 2022 census rate, and newcomers on the open market generally pay a step up. Residents are left with €24,836 a year to spend (360th highest of 400 German districts, 46th in North Rhine-Westphalia). That sits roughly 13% below the national average of €28,453. On its own that number tells half the story; the local cost of living does the rest. Building plots go for around €262 per m², the 108th highest of 394 districts with a recorded price, the raw land cost that ultimately works its way into what you pay in rent. Half of Germany’s districts come in under about €132 per m². For a 70 m² flat that is around €438 a month in cold rent at €6.25/m² — an existing tenancy in 2022; budget above it for a new lease. Against local incomes, that ranks 40th most affordable of North Rhine-Westphalia’s 53 districts. For scale, that is about 67% of the rent in Cologne (€9.39/m²).
The local housing market
What you are renting into, on the 2022 census: 71.5% of homes are rented rather than owner-occupied; the vacancy rate is 3.6% (roughly in balance); the average home measures 80 m². The stock is 200,117 homes in 58,917 buildings, about 3.4 per building, so this is an apartment area rather than one of houses. In the latest year 131 new dwellings were completed against 96 permits, a rough read on how fast the housing stock is growing.
Who lives in Bochum
The 2022 census picture: age bands and how households are made up.
Age distribution
27.9% of residents are aged 25 to 45, the prime working-age band, with 12.9% under 15 and 22.4% at 65 or older. A few more strokes from the 2022 census: 24.9% of residents have a migration history (14.3% are foreign nationals); 50.5% of households are single-person; 43.2% of adults hold an Abitur / university-entrance qualification. A fair international presence to lean on while you find your feet. There are 38,325 pupils in local schools. Daycare places get easier to find as children get older: about 1.4% of under-1s, 33.1% of 1 to 2 year olds and 65.1% of 2 to 3 year olds have a place, meaning infants are the squeeze and toddlers far less so.
Internet & connectivity
How many households can reach each speed (Breitbandatlas, end of 2025). Gigabit can arrive over fibre or upgraded cable; true fibre (FTTB/H) is broken out separately.
99% of households can get a fixed line of at least 100 Mbit/s, and 95% can reach gigabit (1,000 Mbit/s) speeds (Breitbandatlas, end of 2025). Fibre all the way to the building (FTTB/H) covers 53% of households, with upgraded cable making up the balance of the gigabit figure. On mobile, 5G reaches 100% of households. If you are keeping a job abroad, a home office works at most addresses here.
Where Bochum is in Germany
Recorded crime
The local rate of recorded offences, per 100,000 residents.
In 2025 the police logged 8,538 offences per 100,000 residents here (the Häufigkeitszahl), 68% above the German district median of about 5,096. This counts offences registered by the police, not convictions, and is inflated wherever offenders and victims are not residents: city centres, major stations, motorways and airports all push it up. It reflects recorded activity in the area, not how dangerous the place is for the people who live there. Source: Polizeiliche Kriminalstatistik, BKA 2025.
Local taxes
For most people moving here, local tax is a non-event. The Gewerbesteuer multiplier here is 495% — relevant if you register a business, invisible if you are employed. 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
Bochum is growing. In 2024, 19,782 people registered an address here and 16,520 deregistered, leaving +3,262. More arrive than leave, which keeps steady pressure on the rental market. It granted 2,810 citizenships in 2024, a naturalisation rate of 5.1%. Some 20,890 people here hold or are seeking protection status, about 58.2 per 1,000 residents, the combined asylum, refugee and humanitarian total, with Ukrainians counted here since 2022. At the last election, 81.3% turned out to vote.
Just arrived in Bochum? Sort these first
Bochum sees a lot of churn, so internet hook-ups and bank appointments book out quickly. Sort the essentials before you land.
FAQ: relocating to Bochum
What is the job market like in Bochum?
There are 150,864 jobs at workplaces in Bochum, 421 for every 1,000 residents once commuters are counted, with unemployment at 9.1%, roughly one in 11 of the local workforce, against 6.3% across Germany.
What does it cost to live in Bochum?
The average net cold rent is €6.25 per m² (14% below the €7.28 German average), from existing 2022 tenancies, so a new lease runs higher. Disposable income per resident is €24,836 (360th highest of 400 German districts, 46th in North Rhine-Westphalia). That sits roughly 13% below the national average of €28,453. Remember it is a nominal figure and ignores what life actually costs here.
Will broadband in Bochum support remote work?
99% of households can get a fixed line of at least 100 Mbit/s, 95% gigabit of which 53% true fibre (FTTB/H); 5G mobile reaches 100% (Breitbandatlas, end of 2025), so the connection is rarely the issue for home working.
How built-up is Bochum?
With about 2,462 residents per km², Bochum is firmly on the urban side.
Is Bochum growing or shrinking?
Bochum is gaining residents: over a year 19,782 people moved in and 16,520 moved out, a net of +3,262, about 0.9% of the population in a year.
Other places in North Rhine-Westphalia
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 ›