MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Greeks and Spaniards move north in growing numbers looking for jobs, says OECD

“This is a brain-drain which has long-term consequences,” Gurria said.

Greeks and Spaniards are moving to northern Europe in growing numbers, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said this week, as soaring unemployment rates and fiscal austerity erode living standards in the south.

 In its annual report on migration, the OECD said the number of Greeks moving to Germany rose by more than 70% to 34,000 between 2011 and 2012, while Spanish and Portuguese migration there increased by half.

OECD Secretary General Angel Gurria said that the number of migrating highly skilled workers from crisis-hit economies had risen, possibly weighing on any economic recovery.

“This is a brain-drain which has long-term consequences,” Gurria said.

Spain and Greece have the highest unemployment rates in the European Union, with more than half of young people without jobs, after years of recession caused by the sovereign debt crisis.

Before the debt crisis, people in the EU chose the security of staying home over moving to other countries, with the rate of migration falling by 40% between 2007 and 2010.

But this trend is beginning to change, with the number of people moving within the EU rising by 15% in 2011, the Paris-based group of mostly wealthy countries said.

The crisis has been tougher on immigrants than native born-citizens, and high unemployment rates particularly among the young have fuelled a growing debate in some states on the overall cost of immigration.

But the OECD’s first analysis of immigrants’ impact on national economies showed that “migrants have a positive or, at worst, neutral fiscal impact” that rarely exceeds 0.5% of GDP, Gurria said.

Tax receipts and social security contributions from immigrants offset the costs of their benefits in a majority of OECD member states, OECD research shows.

Most notably, immigrant households in Italy, Greece, Spain, Portugal and the United Kingdom on average make a larger net contribution to government finances than native-born households, it showed.

The OECD said increasing employment among immigrants to native citizens levels would yield significant fiscal gains, particularly in Belgium, France and Sweden.

The OECD also said the number of people seeking asylum in OECD countries had increased by 28% in the past two years, particularly from Syria and Libya.