Spaniards head to Germany in droves to escape grip of crisis back home

The persistent rise in Spain's unemployment rate is pushing more workers into seeking employment abroad. A favorite destination these days is Germany, which boasts historically low jobless figures and nearly three percent growth despite the economic crisis. This is the reason why 2,400 Spaniards packed their bags between January and June and took a flight out to the European powerhouse.

This number represents a 49 percent rise compared with the same period last year, according to data released by Germany's federal department of statistics. The agency attributes this returning phenomenon ? Spanish migration to Germany was markedly strong in the 1960s ? to the euro-zone crisis and the economic downturn in European Union peripheral countries.

For that same reason, there has also been a sharp rise in Greek immigration to Germany, although Greece formally has less unemployment than Spain: 18 percent, versus 22 percent here. Nevertheless, Greek migration to Germany grew 84 percent in the first half.

It is likely that Spanish arrivals will continue to grow in the near future thanks to recruiting campaigns carried out here over the summer by German chambers of commerce with the goal of finding young engineers. German Chancellor Angela Merkel herself said that one of the most industrially advanced powers in the world will need around 100,000 graduates in this field to make up for an ageing population over the next decade.

Spaniards who are hired for one of these jobs will find themselves earning an average annual salary of 41,225 euros, which after three years' experience goes up to around 54,900 euros a year. In Spain, the average salary for the sector is 25,000 euros a year.

Not all Spaniards who decide to move abroad are young engineers, although a survey by Adecco, the human resources multinational, shows that most job seekers are highly qualified men aged between 25 and 35. There are also plenty of offers for them, since Germany is expected to need an annual input of around 500,000 foreign-born workers after 2015 if it wants to keep its economy going strong on a growing population of retired Germans.

Still, not all job postings offer high wages or great expectations. The German labor market also has a great deal of "mini-jobs," a type of contract in which the top monthly salary is 400 euros for a maximum of 80 working hours, and which could soon be reaching Spain. There are seven million people working in this situation across Germany since the initiative got underway in 2003, and the mini-contracts are especially common in the hospitality sector, where 810,000 people work in these conditions.

Together with a rise in arrivals from Spain and Greece, the federal department of statistics has noticed a clear rise in worker immigration from Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania. Of all the arrivals between January and June, 62 percent came from another EU member state, with 11 percent from non-EU countries, Asia and the Americas.