Those Europeans surprised at the the amount of money Americans make evidently aren't working in America. Maybe that tautologically makes them not the best, but I doubt it. Sometimes a "good enough" salary at a place you're comfortable beats an astronomical salary that requires moving to Silicon Valley.

That you personally only know few people who moved to Europe from the US but many who moved to the US probably says more about your location than about general trends. I know only few Germans who moved to the US for work, but many Americans, Iranians and Chinese who moved to Berlin. But that's where I live, so it's to be expected.

It's going to get even more extreme in the near future. Tesla is embarrassing all of the German auto manufacturers mightily. I think they'll need one or two to go down before they break out of their complacency.

It's forecast that Germany will lose around 1/3 of its auto industry jobs over the next few decades, in the switch to electric vehicles. Areas of auto manufacturing that they are very good at, are simply going to go away when everything is electric.

I would expect BMW to struggle the most among the German giants, if Tesla doesn't stop growing soon. The rise of Mercedes back to top form was a bad enough of a hit for BMW, then Tesla comes along poised to sell $40 billion worth of cars every year in the near future (all of which cost far more than ~$35k, which is a direct shot at all the luxury makers).

Germany is sitting in a great position nationally (epic trade surplus, good national finances, and reasonably fine household finances), now is the time to aggressively invest if you're them, to try to build out a large number of new technology jobs.