Germany welcomes southern Europe's best and brightest into its workforce

Young graduates from Greece, Spain and Portugal head north as home employment prospects remain bleak

Frankfurt, home of the celebrated book fair, is a magnet for Greek migrants seeking work.

Unemployment rates continue to break records in the eurozone, and there is little chance of an improvement this year. The crisis in the jobs market across Europe is hitting young people hardest, setting in motion new migratory patterns between Mediterranean countries and the north.

Germany stands out as an exception. Despite sluggish growth in the EU's largest economy, unemployment is steady: good news that won't fall on deaf ears. In the past two years, the net number of people entering Germany rose from 128,000 to 340,000. German businesses are drawing on a fresh source of cheap, qualified labour from Greece and Spain.

After five years in higher education, Paschalis Lampridis, 25, left Greece – and its labour market devastated by recession and austerity – and headed for Frankfurt, the business capital of a country where companies are still producing, investing and, above all, hiring. That was a year ago. Now, working as a computer programmer for the tyre firm Continental, Lampridis refuses to indulge in nostalgia. Obviously, he sometimes dreams of sea and sun. The winter in Frankfurt has been overcast and persistently cold, but, he says, "There was no future for me at home."

The statistics endorse this view. Unemployment is soaring in Greece and Spain, with more than one in four out of work. Youth is bearing the brunt of the downturn, with more than half the active population under 25 jobless. Meanwhile, the German labour market is buoyant. According to figures published by the federal employment agency in February, unemployment is steady at 6.9%.

Tens of thousands of young people from southern Europe have followed the same path as Lampridis. In the first nine months of 2012, 27,000 Spaniards, 26,300 Greeks and almost 10,000 Portuguese moved to Germany. The Germans have already found a name for them, neue Gastarbeiter (new guest workers), a throwback to the immigrants who flocked to West Germany in the 1960s, leaving their homes in Turkey and southern Europe to staff the machines of the economic miracle.

However, the new generation differs from its predecessors. Today's migrants are younger and better qualified. Lampridis had to overcome his "terror" of a difficult language and settle in. "To begin with, I could only understand about a third of what people were saying," he says. "But they know the value of good work here."

Elena Dolaptsi, 23, is a fully qualified childminder. She has travelled the same road as her parents did 10 years earlier, but in the opposite direction. Homesick after years of casual labour in Frankfurt they finally returned home to Drama, in the Greek region of east Macedonia. At the time, the Greek economy was in better shape whereas Germany, with almost 5 million unemployed, was the "sick man of Europe".

That has all changed now. Battered by the current crisis, the lifeblood of Greece is ebbing away. "If I'd wanted to stay, my only option would have been to settle on an island and make do with €400 [$520] a month in wages," Dolaptsi explains in her still hesitant German. So she chose to try her luck in Germany. She arrived in January and started work in a nursery in a small town near Frankfurt. To find a job, she answered seven adverts and received six positive responses.

German business is thriving but the population is growing old, resulting in an increasingly acute shortage of labour. The country is desperately looking for qualified personnel to staff its factories, research laboratories, hospitals and kindergartens. According to experts, at least 400,000 newcomers (in the net migration balance) will be needed every year to compensate for ageing and to maintain current economic trends.

Southern Europe has a massive reserve of young talent with poor prospects. The Frankfurt area, on the other hand, is prosperous – thanks to its banks, car and chemical industries but also its trade fairs, where valuable deals are settled. In a drive to attract the personnel it needs, the Hesse region finalised a partnership agreement with the Madrid area last autumn. The scheme includes crash courses in German for people less concerned about the finer points of the language than with technical and financial vocabulary. But the partnership will also bring Spanish apprentices to local firms. A website has gone live to help newcomers complete administrative formalities and find lodgings.

German business leaders have taken to attending job fairs in Spain. Invenio is a medium-sized German operation – with a workforce of 580 – that specialises in outsourcing its engineers to larger companies. Currently enjoying rapid growth, it has had to turn down contracts for lack of sufficient human resources. So it too has started looking for staff in Spain. In recent months, Invenio has hired about 20 Spanish graduates and intends to find more. "They are highly motivated and bring a different outlook with them," says the company's CEO, Kai Wissler.

But things do not always go quite so smoothly for these economic refugees. Many land in a foreign country with no money, work, qualifications or connections. Quite a few knock on the door of Athenagoras Ziliaskopoulos, the head of Frankfurt's Greek Orthodox community. They are looking for advice, a decent translation or maybe even a roof over their heads. Since 2009, the priest has provided emergency lodging in the church for hundreds of his compatriots.

"A lot of them are under some sort of misconception," Ziliaskopoulos says. "They think they can find work just by stopping someone in the street." He usually firmly suggests that the poorest applicants go home, paying for a bus or plane ticket out of community funds. He reckons the only ones who stand a chance are mobile and adaptable graduates, who ideally speak several languages. Indeed, in their case exile is probably the only solution, he adds with a sigh.

But is Germany not in danger of alienating its partners in the south by attracting their best brains? "You mustn't imagine we're happy about the situation there," says Wissler. "One day these young people will be able to go home with the benefit of the experience they have gained here, rather than having to endure years of unemployment."

Lampridis has no plans to return to Greece in the near future, unless he is sent there by a foreign company with pay on a par with German earnings … like an expatriate in his home country.