Nepal Foreign Employment Statistics: Labour Migration Dashboard

Foreign employment (vaideshik rojgar) is one of the defining features of modern Nepal's economy and society. Every fiscal year the Department of Foreign Employment (DoFE) issues hundreds of thousands of labour approvals (shram swikriti) that permit Nepali citizens to take up jobs overseas through licensed recruitment agencies, individual arrangements, or government-to-government schemes. In fiscal year (FY) 2023/24, which corresponds to BS 2080/81, 741,297 new labour approvals were issued, of which 661,125 went to men and 80,172 to women.

The single-year figure understates the true stock of Nepalis abroad, because many workers renew their permits for repeat contracts and many others depart on channels that a single year's new-approval count does not capture. Across the two years 2022/23 and 2023/24 combined, the government recorded 954,319 new labour approvals alongside 558,297 renewed labour approvals, according to the Nepal Labour Migration Report 2024. Renewed approvals reflect workers extending or re-entering employment rather than leaving Nepal for the first time.

Because official approvals cover only formal, documented departures for third countries, they exclude the very large number of Nepalis who live and work in India under the open border, where no labour permit is required. Estimates of Nepalis in India vary widely and are not counted in DoFE data, so any statement about 'how many Nepalis work abroad' should specify whether India is included. The dashboard figures on this page refer to documented departures for countries other than India.

The DoFE began issuing labour approvals in its current computerised form in the late 2000s, and the cumulative total gives a sense of the scale of Nepal's diaspora of workers. Between FY 2008/09 and FY 2023/24, roughly 5.7 million new labour approvals were issued to Nepali workers for foreign employment. This cumulative count is not the number of people currently abroad, since it includes workers who have since returned, changed destinations, or obtained multiple approvals over the years.

The annual flow has risen and fallen with global labour demand, oil-price cycles in the Gulf, Malaysian recruitment policy, and shocks such as the COVID-19 pandemic, which sharply cut departures in 2019/20 and 2020/21 before a strong rebound. The recovery pushed annual approvals to their highest levels ever in the two most recent reported years, exceeding 771,000 combined new and re-entry permits in 2022/23 and 741,297 new approvals in 2023/24.

For historical context, the earliest documented year of departmental data records only about 3,605 approvals in 1993/94. The pre-pandemic single-year peak for new approvals came in FY 2013/14, at roughly 527,814. Comparing across decades therefore shows an extraordinary transformation: from a few thousand documented workers a year in the early 1990s to more than half a million annually within two decades.

Nepali labour migration is heavily concentrated in a small number of destination countries. The six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman, together with Malaysia, account for the overwhelming majority of departures. According to the Nepal Labour Migration Report 2024, the GCC plus Malaysia absorbed about 81.3 percent of total new labour approvals in the reported period.

The ranking among these destinations shifts from year to year. Malaysia was the single largest destination in FY 2022/23, but by FY 2023/24 the UAE had risen to take a larger share of departures while Malaysia's share fell. Saudi Arabia and Qatar consistently rank among the top destinations. Because the composition changes with recruitment policy, health-screening rules and construction demand, the dashboard reports shares by fiscal year rather than a single fixed ranking.

Beyond the Gulf and Malaysia, smaller but growing streams go to destinations such as South Korea (under the Employment Permit System), Japan, Romania, Cyprus, Poland and other European labour markets, as well as Mauritius and the Maldives. Occupation profiles differ by destination: workers bound for Malaysia have concentrated in manufacturing, while those heading to Gulf states more often take elementary occupations in construction, services and cleaning.

Women have historically formed a small minority of Nepal's documented labour migrants, partly because of periodic government restrictions on the migration of women for domestic work in Gulf countries, and partly because much female migration occurs through informal channels that official approvals do not capture. The share of labour approvals issued to women has nonetheless risen steadily over time.

The female share reached a peak of 12.9 percent in FY 2023/24, the highest recorded to date. Across the two years 2022/23 and 2023/24 combined, a total of 152,305 new and renewed labour approvals were issued to female migrant workers. In absolute terms, 80,172 of the 741,297 new approvals in FY 2023/24 went to women.

Analysts caution that the documented female share understates women's true participation in overseas work, because bans and restrictions push many women to travel through India or on visit visas that later convert to work, leaving them outside the official statistics and often more exposed to exploitation. The occupation mix for documented women differs from men's, with a higher proportion in cleaning, laundry and care work compared with construction and manufacturing for men.

Foreign employment is inseparable from remittances, the money migrant workers send home. Remittance inflows are among the largest single sources of foreign exchange for Nepal and a mainstay of household consumption, education spending and rural livelihoods. In FY 2023/24, remittance inflows exceeded NPR 1,445 billion, equivalent to roughly a quarter of Nepal's gross domestic product (GDP), one of the highest remittance-to-GDP ratios in the world.

This dependence links the labour-approval dashboard directly to the national economy: swings in departures and destination wages feed through to the balance of payments, foreign-currency reserves and the exchange rate within a few quarters. When Gulf and Malaysian demand is strong, both approvals and remittances rise together, as they did in the 2022/23 and 2023/24 rebound.

Because exchange rates and monthly remittance figures change constantly, this page reports remittances only as an annual, fiscal-year magnitude and share of GDP rather than a live figure. For the latest monthly remittance data, readers should consult the Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB), the central bank, which publishes current macroeconomic and balance-of-payments statistics.

The primary source for these numbers is the Department of Foreign Employment (DoFE) under the Ministry of Labour, Employment and Social Security, which records every labour approval it issues and publishes Yearly Progress Reports. These departmental records are compiled and analysed in the periodic Nepal Labour Migration Report, produced with the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the Centre for the Study of Labour and Mobility (CESLAM); the most recent edition covers FY 2022/23 and 2023/24.

Several caveats apply when reading the dashboard. First, 'labour approvals' count permits, not unique persons, so cumulative and annual totals can double-count workers who obtain more than one approval. Second, migration to India is excluded entirely. Third, undocumented departures, workers who leave on tourist or visit visas and take up work abroad, are not captured, which particularly affects female-migration figures. Fourth, renewed approvals should not be added to new approvals when estimating first-time departures.

For these reasons the figures on this hub are best read as consistent official indicators of documented, formal-channel labour migration, useful for tracking trends and destination shares over time, rather than a precise headcount of every Nepali abroad. Where a number is indicative or rounded, this page says so, and every headline figure is tied to a specific fiscal year and cited source.