Voting With Their Feet : Germany once attracted workers from around the world. Now its own jobless are flocking elsewhere.">.

A year ago life looked bleak for Jens Sroka. He had just lost his job, courtesy of Germany's never-ending economic slump. Nor did prospects look good in hometown Wurschnitz, a village in eastern Saxony where one in five people is out of work. So he did what millions have done before when they have lost faith in their country's future. He left. Destination: a boomtown in western Sweden called Boras, where bricklayers like himself are in short supply. Today he earns twice what he used to. Soon he'll send for his wife and two sons.

In better times Germany was renowned for its Gastarbeiter--guest workers drawn by the millions from Italy, Greece, Turkey and the Balkans. These days it's Germany that is sending its own downtrodden abroad. Last year a net 111,000 people moved out of the country--five times the rate of emigration in healthier times. The overwhelming majority were young workers and their families. Frustrated with their government's economic failures, they are leaving for the United States, Australia and the more dynamic parts of Europe. These days that's almost anywhere.

This wouldn't be Germany if the phenomenon didn't spawn its own bureaucracy. Labor offices around the country now boast full-time emigration advisers. State-financed training centers teaching Dutch, Norwegian or Swedish have recently been set up in major cities. The vocational-training academy in depressed Neuruppin, northwest of Berlin, ...