The Research Data Centre (FDZ) of the German Federal Employment Agency (BA) in the Institute for Employment Research (IAB) was founded in 2004 and is intended mainly to facilitate access to BA and IAB micro data for non-commercial empirical research using standardised and transparent access...

In the last years access to research data has made a lot of progress in EU countries. Nevertheless transnational access to confidential microdata – although there are some developments like "Data without Boundaries" – is still complicated and needs improvement.

This contribution shows the increasing supply on German micro data over the last years for labor market research. We focus on the research data centre movement, the development of new anonymisation techniques for establishment data, the new challenges of the social code II and the fundamental...