German brain drain at highest level since 1940s

Heidi Klum


German brain drain at highest level since 1940s
By Tony Paterson in Berlin
Published: 01 June 2007

For a nation that invented the term "guest worker" for its immigrant labourers, Germany is facing the sobering fact that record numbers of its own often highly-qualified citizens are fleeing the country to work abroad in the biggest mass exodus for 60 years.
Figures released by Germany's Federal Statistics Office showed that the number of Germans emigrating rose to 155,290 last year - the highest number since the country's reunification in 1990 - which equalled levels last experienced in the 1940s during the chaotic aftermath of the Second World War.
The statistics, which also revealed that the number of immigrants had declined steadily since 2001, were a stark reminder of the extent of the German economy's decline from the heady 1960s when thousands of mainly Turkish workers flocked to find work in the country.
Leading economists and employers say the trend is alarming. They note that many among Germany's new breed of home-grown "guest workers" are highly-educated management consultants, doctors, dentists, scientists and lawyers.
OECD figures show that Germany is near the top of a league of industrial nations experiencing a brain drain which for the first time since the 1950s now exceeds the number of immigrants.
Stephanie Wahl, of the Institute for Economics, based in Bonn, said that those who are leaving Germany are mostly highly motivated and well educated. "Those coming in are mostly poor, untrained and hardly educated," she added.
Fed up with comparatively poor job prospects at home - where unemployment is as high as 17 per cent in some regions - as well as high taxes and bureaucracy, thousands of Germans have upped sticks for Austria and Switzerland, or emigrated to the United States.
Yesterday, the country'swoes were underscored by a report which disclosed that areas of unemployment-wracked eastern Germany were populated by a "male-dominated underclass susceptible to far right ideology" because of a dramatic 25 per cent exodus of young women aged 18 to 29.
More than 18,000 Germans moved to Switzerland last year. The US was the second most popular destination with 13,245, followed by Austria with 9,309.
Switzerland already has a resident German population of 170,000. Its presence has even provoked a xenophobic backlash in the country's tabloid press. Earlier this year, the Swiss newspaper Blick ran an anti-German campaign which spoke of a "German invasion" and quoted readers who claimed they found the German immigrants to be "arrogant and rude". Many immigrants, however, say the benefits of lower taxes and pay up to three times higher than at home far outweigh the occasional xenophobic outburst.
Claus Boche, a 32-year-old executive, left the west German city of Paderborn two-and-a-half years agoto take up a job with a Swiss management consulting firm. He now lives in Zurich. "Nearly everything is less bureaucratic and more go ahead than in Germany," he said. "I also pay about 40 per cent less tax. I have no plans to go back."
The current exodus hardly fits in with the official view of the German economy, which is said to be "booming". Although jobless figures for May were reported to be marginally up yesterday, Chancellor Angela Merkel's grand coalition government of conservatives and Social Democrats has taken credit for a steady 13-month decline in the country's unemployment to below four million.
However, the gradual economic upturn has so far failed to halt an exodus of the country's well-trained. Thomas Bauer, a labour economist from Essen, was scathing about Germany's employment conditions. "Germany is certainly not attractive when compared to other countries in Europe," he said. "The taxes are too high, the wages are too low and feelings of jealousy towards high-income earners is widespread. This is a special deterrent to the highly qualified."