Where Highly Educated Migrants Come From

Voters in India are getting set to head to the polls this weekend, in what has been dubbed the world’s biggest election. Nearly 1 billion people are eligible to determine whether Narendra Modi, leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), will rule the country for a third consecutive term. One of the major challenges facing the country right now according to data from a Statista Consumer Insights survey is that of unemployment. This will be a major sticking point for younger voters. 

With often better opportunities abroad, the country is losing valuable talent. And it’s not alone, as OECD data reveals. In fact, in 2015/2016 - the latest year on record - 40 million highly educated migrants were living in OECD member countries. While skilled migrants are certainly welcomed by labor markets in most developed nations especially in times of falling birth rates, the migration of the educated can also have a detrimental effect on their home countries - often described as brain drain.

As seen in the numbers, China and India had sent the most highly skilled migrants abroad as of the latest available date. Yet, compared to the size of their populations, the numbers are comparably low. Other major brain drain locations have lost many more talented workers in relative terms, for example the Philippines, Poland, Mexico and Russia.

The Philippines have been known for supplying the world with health care professionals, especially nurses. Many of these highly skilled professionals emigrate to the U.S., forming the third-most important skilled labor emigration corridor of the OECD behind Mexican and Indian migration to the United States. As a result, 14.3 percent of highly skilled Filipinos had emigrated to the OECD as of 2015/16. This rate is even higher in small or isolated developing economies. In Caribbean state Guyana, almost 71 percent of the highly educated had left for the OECD, compared with 66 percent in Trinidad and Tobago and 63 percent in Mauritius.