Nearly five million Indian citizens planning to migrate within the next year
An estimated 4.8 million Indian adults are actively planning and preparing to move to another country within the next 12 months, with the US and the UK among the most favored destination countries for prospective migrants.
The figures are published as part of the UN migration agency’s report “Measuring Global Migration Potential 2010-2015.” They reveal that India is topped only by Nigeria (where the number stands at 5.1 million people) in terms of countries with the highest numbers of planned outward migrations.
Following the US and the UK, the most popular destinations for Indian migrants are Saudi Arabia, France, Canada, Germany, and South Africa.
The data comes against a backdrop of a 225% increase in migration from India to the US since 1999.
Reasons cited for the growth in outward migrations include a substantial wage gap when compared with other countries. When seen in the context of the purchasing power parity, the average wage for a person in India is a sixth that of a US counterpart working in academia, less than a third that of a counterpart working in management, and less than half that for someone in the IT sector.
Data also suggest that the Indian labor market does not have the capacity to provide opportunities for high-skilled job seekers. A 2016 UNDP report revealed that India has been able to absorb less than 50% of entrants to the job market between 1991 and 2013, with OECD statistics suggesting that 30.5% of India’s youth are now not in employment, education, or training.
The large growth in net migration has led to concerns that the country faces a shortage of trained manpower, which would be expected to have an adverse effect on the quality and quantity of human capital formation, and hence on development.
However, emigration also benefits the country substantially due to remittances. India stands as the world’s leading recipient of remittances from citizens living in other countries, accounting for 15% of the total global figure received by developing nations. In 2015, remittances received were estimated to account for around 3.2% of the country’s GDP.
Writing about the emigration of high-skilled professionals in his paper The brain drain from developing countries, Frédéric Docquier highlights the fact that so-called “brain drain” can be both beneficial or harmful for a source country’s welfare and development, and that “Imposing too many restrictions on the international mobility of educated residents could be detrimental for development.” Consequently he argues that it is imperative that policymakers “gauge the costs and benefits of the brain drain in order to design appropriate policy responses.”
Read more articles on migration policy and the labor market here.
Have a specific question on this subject? Get in touch with one of our Topic Spokespeople.