AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
The economic problems in Europe and the United States have young, highly-trained workers from those places looking for opportunities elsewhere. One country that's been luring them is Brazil. Foreign fortune-hunters say there's plenty of opportunity in Brazil, even if the country is finally feeling the ill affects of the global economic downturn.
NPR's Juan Forero has the story.
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JUAN FORERO, BYLINE: David Bailey has a talent for music.
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FORERO: Playing piano as he and his roommates prepare for a party in Rio de Janeiro.
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FORERO: They're all foreigners: from France, Switzerland, Spain, and all of them are here for work. Bailey is 28 and from the U.K. And aside from the piano, he has a talent for business. But he decided to leave London, where many of his friends are jobless, and come here to Brazil. Bailey says Brazil's fun, sunny and has a strong culture of music.
DAVID BAILEY: On then on the other hand, it's a place, one of the few places actually, where the economy is growing and there are significant opportunities.
FORERO: He's raised the capital and is now starting up a website to take advantage of Brazilians' growing fondness for ordering out. Diners to peruse menus online and place their order - common in the U.S., but not here in Rio.
BAILEY: Well, you know what? The market is actually really big. Instead of people using the telephone to make their orders, they're going to use the Internet increasingly more.
FORERO: As Brazil's economy grew in recent years, work authorizations for foreigners rose fast. And the unemployment rate is 6 percent with companies finding it hard filling top-end jobs, from engineers to financial experts to executives. Manolo Ferreres from economically troubled Spain says people from his country know this trend all too well.
MANOLO FERRERES: There's a lack, a clear lack of qualified people between 30 years old and 40 years old. And you can see that because there's no unemployment for that profile of professionals, there's no unemployment. And the complete opposite situation is what's happening in Spain. The complete opposite.
FORERO: John Murray is an American who's been here nearly 50 years. The manager of the executive head-hunting firm Boyden, Murray knows better than most what expatriate workers dream of.
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FORERO: In 1963, he came here to export coffee for A&P. He remembers arriving on a cargo ship. He recalls hand-cranked phones and an economy that was coffee-based. It was an uncertain land of opportunity then and he says there are still problems, like Brazil's notorious red tape. But Murray also says Brazil has been transformed.
JOHN MURRAY: Things are still happening here. There is a feeling especially for a young executive that he can come down here, either starting with a job and eventually becoming an entrepreneur. Many times they don't see the negatives, which are also here, but right now Brazil just looks very, very rosy.
FORERO: Jon Rosenthal, formerly an up-and-comer on Wall Street, acknowledges that the economy is suddenly flat because of the global downturn. But the 31-year-old New Yorker also knows that the 4 percent growth the government is forecasting for 2012 is still good by European standards.
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FORERO: On a recent day, he relaxed with a coffee just off Faria Lima - the Wall Street of Sao Paulo, the country's economic engine. Rosenthal explains that he had to be here, a city where he could learn about the fast-growing companies on Brazil's stock exchange. It was vital for his start-up, a hedge fund called Newfoundland Capital Management.
JON ROSENTHAL: These developed-world cities are static relative to what we're seeing around here in Brazil. The investment opportunities here, the overall morale of the investment community here definitely inspires a lot of excitement and confidence.
FORERO: He says it's like living at a time when Rome is being built. Juan Forero, NPR News.
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