New Delhi: The great Western migration is afoot. Data from 31 countries shows that four million people emigrated from Western countries in 2024, almost 20 per cent more than before the pandemic.
A report by The Economist shows that the surge in emigration is, in part, the unwinding of an immigration boom in 2022 and 2023, when Western countries admitted large numbers of newcomers. Many of those who left, or are leaving these countries in large numbers, include students and temporary workers.
The countries included in the survey are Australia, Britain, Canada, and Germany; the study did not include the United States, where estimates remain unreliable. The Brookings Institution, a think-tank, estimates that as many as three million left America in 2025, up from two million in 2021. Private-sector data suggest that, for the first time in years, more American tech workers are moving to Europe than vice versa.
“We track the comings and goings of residents leaving on a permanent or semi-permanent basis (to exclude tourists and business travellers). Our best estimate is that around 4 million people left those places in 2024, about 20 per cent more than before the pandemic,” the report read.
The report also added that US President Donald Trump’s “mass deportation” policy during his second term (starting in 2025) may also provoke up to a million people to leave in 2026.
According to the data, however, emigration from Greece has fallen since the mid-2010s, as the Greek economy has transformed from an European Union laggard into a strong performer. In the third quarter of 2025, departures from Canada were 34 per cent higher than six years earlier. New Zealand’s emigration in 2025 was 29 per cent above 2019 levels.
Sweden witnessed an even higher increase, with emigration more than 60 per cent higher. Italy’s statistics office recently noted a “boom in emigration”. Iceland reported the highest level on record. In Ireland, departures of citizens are up by 29 per cent compared with 2019. In New Zealand, they are up by 74 per cent.
The data further shows that immigrants with an undergraduate degree are at least twice as likely to emigrate in their 20s as those without one.
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What’s behind the rise in emigration?
The report found that the major reasons behind the sharp rise in emigration from Western countries include remote work culture, changing political perspectives, and rising living expenses.
The transformation in work culture after the pandemic is one of the reasons behind this rise in emigration, as people can now work from anywhere they want.
“First, the pandemic normalised geographical arbitrage. American multinationals in sectors such as management and technical consulting employ 36 per cent more people abroad than they did in 2019,” the report read.
The second major factor is rising taxation in many Western countries, which has become a reason for people to leave. The report argues that several governments have adopted policies aimed at increasing taxes on high earners, pushing wealthy individuals and skilled workers to move to countries with lower taxes.
“In recent years, many Western governments have implemented ‘Robin Hood’ policies that go after rich people’s incomes. In Britain, the top 1 per cent pay an effective income-tax rate of about 40 per cent, up from less than 35 per cent in the 2000s. In America, the overall effective tax rate on the top 1 per cent, including federal, state and local taxes plus corporate tax, is close to historical highs,” the study found.
Another major reason highlighted was the growing political dissatisfaction and declining trust in democratic systems across the West. Many emigrants are leaving not only for economic reasons, but also because of political dissatisfaction, including opposition to Trump.
“Many Americans who waltz around Hampstead dislike Mr Trump. Many of the Britons who have moved to Dubai detest ‘Keir Starmer’s socialist Britain’. Conservative Canadians, now living through their 11th year of centre-left Liberal rule, are looking elsewhere,” the report further added.
(Edited by Insha Jalil Waziri)