DÜSSELDORF, Germany — After a decade of economic pain, Greece finally appears to be back on track. Try telling that to the Greeks who left and have no plans to return, like Constantine Kakoyiannis.

As Mr. Kakoyiannis raised a glass of beer, he toasted his girlfriend, Kalliope Rapti, at a German cafe in Düsseldorf, with 40 of their friends. The group, part of a club of expatriate Greek engineers, was welcoming several newcomers.

«When you realize that your country has become a cemetery of dreams, you need to find dreams elsewhere,» Mr. Kakoyiannis said.

Nearly half a million Greeks have become economic migrants since the crisis began, one of the biggest exoduses from any eurozone country.

And they are still leaving.

Among them are doctors, technicians, architects and other skilled professionals as well as recent graduates who continue to stake out Europe’s prosperous north for work. Mr. Kakoyiannis secured a coveted job as an engineer, and Ms. Rapti, who runs a language website, followed him here.

As Athens prepares in August to exit an eight-year dependency on international financial bailouts and repay those debts, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has declared a recovery. Growth is showing some signs of a rebound. Recently, Mr. Tsipras unveiled a new economic blueprint for Greece and urged Greeks to return to help rebuild the country. European leaders are heralding the symbolic end to a Greek crisis that began in 2010.

Yet a fifth of Greeks are still unemployed, and the economy remains smaller than a decade ago. And the political uncertainty in Italy, with the pall it casts over the fate of the euro, has the potential to undermine the progress in Greece.

«When an economy has been destroyed, it takes many years to rebuild,» said Vasilis Kapoglou, who founded the Greek Engineers of North Rhine-Westphalia club after leaving Greece in 2013. «The bailout may be ending, but the problems that drove people away aren’t.»

In North Rhine-Westphalia, a booming region that includes Düsseldorf and Cologne, about 130,000 Greeks work at German tech, telecommunications and construction companies.

So many Greeks have descended on Düsseldorf that a mini-Athens is thriving. Greek tavernas and cafes are filled with cosmopolitan young Greeks, a scene reminiscent of any Athenian square.

A boutique, run by Greeks from a wave of guest workers in the ’50s, offers white taffeta baby dresses and sugarcoated almonds, traditional symbols of Greek Orthodox baptisms. At the Cafe Byzantio, Greeks savor baklava desserts.

At the forefront of the continued emigration wave are engineers. While investors are showing renewed interest in Greece, construction, development and tech projects there are still struggling to recover.

«Engineers are connected to the development of a country,» said Martha Ouzounidou, a chemical engineer from Thessaloniki who came to Düsseldorf last fall to work at a German maker of electric car batteries. «But there is no development happening in Greece.»

Engineers who stay behind tend to be supported by parents, or are finding low-paying jobs working on hotel construction linked to tourism, one of the country’s few growth sectors, Mr. Kapoglou said.

There is a bitter irony for families back home. Germany was seen as the lead enforcer of austerity in Greece, demanding debilitating cuts in pensions, salaries and the public sector in exchange for about $380 billion worth of bailouts to reduce Greece’s mountain of debt. Many Greeks now blame Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany for their plight.

The Greeks who left, however, are more angry at their own government, which they say has chronically mismanaged the economy by failing to end corruption, reduce the lumbering state or revive investment.

In Germany, the transition isn’t always easy. Düsseldorf’s drizzly skies, the direct demeanor of the Germans and the difficulty in making German friends — even after learning the language — can be a struggle.

Mr. Kapoglou and his wife, Katerina, are among the few who might return. «We’d like to be part of a brain gain,» he said.

Mr. Kakoyiannis said his mother had pressed him on when they would return. «Go back to what?» he recalled replying. The couple had put off having children in Greece. Now, they are planning on having one — though notthere. «In Germany, we have hope for the future,» Ms. Rapti said. «And so will our child.»

In Düsseldorf, a mini-Athens is thriving.