Other experts contend, though, that such fears are overblown. Germany has long sent its scientists and engineers to work or study abroad, they say, with the number of returnees historically balancing out those who leave. The latest statistics merely reflect an acceleration of that trend, as German academia and industry adjust to an increasingly global economy.

“Whenever the subject of migration comes up, Germans get very nervous,” said Claudia Diehl, a sociologist at the University of Göttingen who has studied migration patterns. “First they were nervous about people coming; now they are worried about people leaving.”

The numbers, she said, may also overstate the incidence of brain drain, because they do not distinguish between native and naturalized Germans. For example, Turkish guest workers who adopt German citizenship and later go home are classified as German emigrants.

Germany is not the only European country losing people. Nicolas Sarkozy, the conservative presidential candidate in France, recently held a rally in London, home to 300,000 French citizens living in Britain, urging them to return and “make France a great nation.”

The number of French citizens living in Britain jumped 8.4 percent in 2005, according to government statistics. But the total number of French people living outside the country grew only 1.2 percent, or 15,300 people, roughly equivalent to Germany’s net loss of about 16,700 citizens.

Caveats aside, there is plenty of anecdotal evidence that Germany has become less attractive for people in fields like medicine, academic research and engineering. Those who leave cite chronic unemployment, a rigid labor market, stifling bureaucracy, high taxes and the plodding economy — which, though better recently, still lags behind that of the United States.

As Dr. Friedrich Boettner, a German orthopedic surgeon at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York, puts it: “I make more money. I’ve got more opportunity. New York was the chance of my lifetime.”