A recent study has revealed that low-skilled Indians who migrated to the United States tend to see a significant gain in their income of around 500%.
Significant Gain in Income
A study by the World Development Report claimed that low-skilled Indians who migrated to the United States tend to see a significant gain in their income of around 500%, followed by those from the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Further explaining, the report said that around 120% surge in income has been recorded among Indians working overseas as compared to a 40% increase due to internal migration.
Notably, the people migrating to the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) nations such as Oman, Kuwait, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Bahrain are likely to see a lesser income gain.
The study reveals that there are 184 million migrants around the world with around 37 million refugees.
Apart from skills, other factors including destination, language ability and age also play crucial roles in deciding the income, noted by the report titled Migrants, Refugees and Societies.
Multi Fold Jump in Income
In case of the highly-skilled workers such as engineers or doctors, the gains are much higher, however, low-skilled workers are also finding themselves having a multi-fold jump in their income.
Further, the report said, “Migration leads to large wage increases for most people whose skills and attributes are a strong match with the needs of the destination society. These gains often exceed what could be achieved in the country of origin, even from internal migration to relatively better-off locations. The gains are so large that at current rates of economic growth it would take decades for the average low-skilled person working in some countries of origin to earn the income they achieve by migrating to a high income country. These gains are then shared with families and communities in the countries of origin through remittances,”.
The report categorized the migrants into four types including Refugees with skills in demand, economic migrants with skills that match with demand, distressed migrants and refugees.
So far, the India-US, India-Bangladesh and India-GCC have been considered among the top migrant corridors.
The migration comes at a cost for people moving to other countries in search of employment, the WDR further noted.
In order to meet the migration cost, Indians moving to Qatar spend almost two months’ of their earnings on an average.
Not only that, the Indian migrants in the UAE send around 70% of their income to their family.
