German job market is an irresistible draw

Javier Lozano, a 28-year-old technical engineering graduate based in the northern city of León, is anxiously awaiting a call from Ferchau Aviation.

He graduated in 2006, but says he hasn't found well-paid, interesting work in Spain, and has decided to seek his fortune in Germany. Laughing, he openly admits that he knows nothing about the country, which he associates "mainly with sausages."

He has continued studying since leaving university, and has worked briefly for the German firm Kraft. "I liked it. They are serious about what they do," he says. He's hoping that if he is able to work in Germany, it will increase his skills, as well as allow him to acquire invaluable experience.

In April, he heard about Eures, a network set up by the European Union to facilitate the movement of labor throughout the bloc. The organization was holding a meeting in Madrid on behalf of German engineering firms looking for talent prepared to make the move to Germany.

Lozano was among the 200 preselected for interviews with the heads of German companies based in Sevilla, Barcelona, and Madrid. "The interview was in English. I don't speak German, but I am prepared to learn it. They created a good impression. They still haven't laid out the employment terms and conditions, because we still have to have a few more meetings before they decide whether to offer me something," he says, barely able to suppress his excitement. He says that if he is offered a job, he believes the salary will be good. Recently graduated engineers in Germany start on an annual salary of around 40,000 euros.

Javier is just one of hundreds of Spanish engineering graduates who are hoping that the vague promises of a job in Germany come to fruition. German Chancellor Angela Merkel first raised the issue back in January, when she said her country would need 100,000 engineers over the next decade. Her comments were picked up around Europe and the rest of the world. German representatives soon began combing Spanish universities and polytechnics.

Germany, a country held in high esteem by many Spaniards, began to take on the aura of the promised land. It has become the new El Dorado, awash with career opportunities for the growing number of jobless rapidly losing hope in an economy that is still showing no signs of recovery. But is Germany all that it is cracked up to be?

The organizers of the German recruitment events say that the situation is getting out of control. They have held dozens of rounds of interviews, "but they actually don't sign up that many people," says María José Arias of the SEPE state-run employment service, and the head of the Eures network in Spain.

Eures was set up 15 years ago to coordinate labor supply and demand in Europe. Its brief is simple, says Arias: "It is about helping people find work in other countries, because free movement of labor is a key EU policy goal."

There is already a joint venture between Spain and Germany, two countries with a special interest in each other. "The exact name is Permanent Bridges of Cooperation between Spain and Germany. The idea is to facilitate entry to anybody interested in that labor market," Arias explains, admitting that she has been surprised by the expectations that the chance of a job in Germany has created over the course of the recruitment events.

It has to be said that the cooperation could be more of a two-way street. Spain has some four million unemployed, while German companies expect to create some 400,000 new posts over the next year, according to the German Federation of Chambers of Commerce.

Looking over the Eures website, it soon becomes clear that of the million or so jobs advertised across a range of sectors the majority are based in Germany. The country is Europe's economic motor, the first economy to emerge from the crisis, but it is now in danger of becoming a victim of its own success, and is paying the price for a sharp fall in the birth rate of the last two decades.

Germany, a nation characterized, if not stereotyped, by its organization and planning skills, has realized that if things continue as they are, it will be 100,000 engineers short by the end of the next decade. Not simply because the economy continues to grow, but because there won't be enough university graduates to replace those who retire each year.

"Last year, we were unable to fill the places for vocational training, because of the way the population is declining. There aren't enough young people. For the same reasons, the more than 50,000 engineers who graduate each year are not enough. We need a further 12,000 each year," says Walther von Plettenberg, the head of the Germany-Spain Chamber of Commerce.

The body has taken advantage of the 2011 Germany-Spain Meeting to throw its weight behind Eures, organizing two recruitment events in Barcelona and Madrid. Von Plettenberg says that it's not just engineers that Germany is short of.

"We need healthcare workers. By 2030, we will be short nearly 40,000 doctors. We also need Spanish teachers, and help in the catering sector," he says, adding that the German companies who attended the event, BMW, Frechau, Alkimia, Dataschalt, and Aixtron, were very impressed by the skills levels of the Spanish candidates.

"Spanish engineers have a good reputation, it has always been an elite career in Spain, with a lot of status. What's more, we have a special bond with the Spanish, and Spaniards feel at home in Germany," he says.

Von Plettenberg says that each meeting produces between 10 and 20 job offers, just a drop in the ocean of Germany's requirements, and not likely to make much of a dent in Spain's unemployment figures. "You have to remember that an event like this is not about signing up huge numbers of people. German companies, like Spanish ones, have a great many ways of hiring," he says.

In short, the Germans are organizing the same kind of events throughout Europe. Despite the close links that Von Pletternberg speaks of, and which are more a result of Spanish emigration to Germany in the 1960s, there are barely 80,000 Spaniards living in Germany today. The numbers are growing, but are dwarfed by the figures for young people leaving Spain for Argentina: around 1,000 a year.

Nevertheless, Germany exercises a particular hold over the collective imagination of Spain's engineers, and the crisis has only strengthened it. Daniel Fernández Egibar, a 26-year-old aeronautical engineer, explains why:

"Up until about 10 years ago, this career had good prospects, but the crisis has worsened, and the job market has shrunk," he says by phone from his home in San Sebastián, where he is working out his strategy to get to Germany.

Recently returned from Chennai in India, where he was finishing his graduate thesis, Fernández Egibar has sent his CV to Airbus and Lufthansa Technik. He has a further reason for wanting to go to Germany as soon as possible: his girlfriend is German, he has studied the language, and already speaks fluent English.

"I think that most Spanish engineers have quite a poor level of English," he says. "Engineering is a tough degree program, and I was always complaining, but by the end of it, you realize that the training is better than in other countries." He says it took him eight years and a half to finish what should have been a five-year program at the Madrid Politécnica University.

Sergio García also took eight years to finish his degree. He has recently returned from Sweden, where he was working on his thesis on wind energy. The 27-year-old also wants to work in Germany.

"I have a few friends already working there. The conditions are good, the salaries higher, and there is room to move up the career ladder," he says, sitting in an elegant office at the Higher School of Engineering Studies in Madrid. It has taken Sergio just a few months to find work here, in the wind energy sector, but he is keen to get to Germany.

"Industrial engineering is a passport to unemployment in this country," says the head of communication at one of Spain's largest engineering colleges, the School of Industry. The school's staff admit that things have changed over the last decade, for the worse.

"Before, students used to find a job as soon as they graduated; they could choose the company or organization they wanted to work for. Nowadays, they face months of job hunting, and then have to take whatever is offered them." And accept lower wages. A recent study by the Valencia Politécnica University concludes that most 2008 engineering graduates are working for around 1,000 euros a month. In those days, unemployment was around five percent, and had hit the construction sector first and hardest.

"Public works projects have suffered the worst government spending cuts. Engineers want to leave this country because there is no work here, and what's more, Germany is attractive because of its high levels of technology," says Manuel Acero, president of the Institute of Engineering in Spain, an organization that brings together dozens of bodies in the private sector, and some 120,000 people.

Acero, who took part in the Eures recruitment events, is not concerned about a brain drain. "This is the result of the current crisis, and about personal decisions. Globalization has scuppered the notion of 'my country.' People can work anywhere these days, in the same way that we take in workers from other countries."

But he is concerned about the longer-term problems that the Spanish economy faces. "We have always produced excellent engineers. We have a good level of industrial development. We are leaders in wind energy, and we have designed fighter planes on a par with the French Mirages. But we didn't continue to develop, wages rose, and many companies left for abroad. We have rested on our laurels, and we haven't worked on adding value. Companies in the nuclear sector are very competitive, but nuclear energy is experiencing one of its best periods at the moment. So we have to start again, or we will disappear as an engineering force."

A 30-year-old engineer who prefers to remain anonymous is equally worried. He too wants to emigrate. After just a few months with a Spanish company, he says he is already unhappy.

"I can't see a future," he says. "I finished industrial engineering, and worked as an intern on a grant for a while, but the grants ran out, and they wouldn't hire me. In the end, I accepted a job offer, but the terms and conditions were not very good, and as you have heard, I'm trying to go to Germany." he says. "If I don't go now, I'll never do it."

Another reason engineers are so keen to work in Germany is that it makes finding a decent job in Spain easier. Sergio García says that the six months he spent in Gothenburg in Sweden working on his graduate thesis were a key factor in him finding work in Spain.

"I know that now is the time to go, to continue the adventure abroad. Germany is my number-one choice. People say that the Germans are very rigid, and they may be, but I have met a great many in Sweden, and they all struck me as open people, like us. Serious, but they are sociable. What's more, Germany makes sense for me, because after Denmark, it is a leader in renewable energies."

Sergio says that his only regret is that he didn't learn about Eures sooner. He first heard about it this spring, when he attended Induforum, the employment fair organized for engineering graduates every year. From that moment on, he says, Spanish companies have ceased to interest him. Germany is calling. And one way or another, he's answering.