Greece hoping to lure expat workers home

Greece's government is trying to lure expatriate workers back to the motherland in a bid to grow the country's workforce and help its economy.

Niki Kerameus, Greece's minister of labor and social security, is leading the push, at the head of a delegation of politicians and business people touring Europe and North America with job fairs aimed at Greeks who left to find employment overseas during the country's economic crisis.

Kerameus told the United Kingdom's Financial Times newspaper her countrymen are skeptical at first when told they are needed at home.

"At the beginning, the atmosphere is negative," she said. "They see in us the representatives of the state that pushed them away. And the challenge is even greater: to show them that today's Greece has nothing to do with the Greece of 2010 or 2012."

The job fairs, which began last year, are being held in European cities including the United Kingdom capital London and Amsterdam in the Netherlands, and will be taken to New York in the United States later in the year. They are aimed at spreading the message that Greece has changed and that opportunities abound and they include many concrete job offers.

Kerameus told the FT the mission is important because the country's shrinking workforce and its skill shortages present an impediment to growth at places such as the Port of Piraeus, which is owned by China COSCO Shipping Corporation Limited and that is now one of the largest ports in Europe.

Kerameus said many Greeks working overseas are ready to be persuaded to return home.

"They start thinking about the language their children are going to learn in school," she said. "And they realize they miss home."

Greece's government says around 600,000 of the country's young and educated citizens left between 2010 and 2021, after the country entered one of the most severe recessions to hit a developed country during peacetime. But the flow has reversed and, for the first time since 2009, more people arrived in Greece during 2023 than left.

The government is offering incentives to encourage workers to return, including a 50 percent reduction in the income tax rate for people who return after having been overseas for five years or more.

Greek companies, including the Aegean and Piraeus Port Authority, are taking part in the tour alongside foreign companies including Deloitte and Lidl.

Salaries in Greece, however, remain among the lowest in Europe and BrainRegain, an NGO focused on reversing the brain drain, told the FT most people who are returning are doing so for emotional reasons, rather than the prospect of good-paying jobs. It said around 32 percent of other returnees came back because they missed the country's warm weather.