Global Expat & Migration Statistics 2026: Latest Data from the UN, World Bank, ILO & UNHCR

More people live outside their country of birth today than at any point in recorded history. As of mid-2024, an estimated 304 million people — about 3.7% of the global population — were international migrants, according to the United Nations and the IOM World Migration Report 2026. That is a population larger than every country on Earth except India and China.

This guide is a data reference, not an opinion piece. It pulls together the most authoritative, up-to-date statistics on global migration and the expat experience — how many people move, where they go, why they leave, and what they contribute economically — and ties every hard number to a primary source with a clear date. Where the data are robust, we say so. Where they are survey-based or industry estimates, we say that too.

If you are an American who has moved abroad, or plans to, these numbers have a practical edge. U.S. citizens are taxed on their worldwide income no matter where they live, and a former home state can keep taxing you until you formally change your domicile. We flag those implications throughout and link to deeper guidance, including whether expats still owe state taxes and how to change your U.S. state residency while living abroad.

How Many People Live Outside Their Country of Birth?

The headline figure comes from the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA), which maintains the authoritative International Migrant Stock dataset. Its 2024 revision puts the number of international migrants — defined as people living in a country other than the one they were born in — at about 304 million as of mid-2024, equal to roughly 3.7% of the world's population (up from 2.9% in 1990).

That total has more than tripled since 1970, and it has consistently grown faster than the world's population:

Three clarifications matter for reading this number correctly:

• It is a stock, not a flow. The 304 million is the total number of people living abroad at a point in time — not the number who moved in 2024. Annual flows are far smaller.
• It counts country of birth, not citizenship. A person who naturalized decades ago still appears in the migrant stock. This is why the figure includes long-settled residents, not just recent arrivals.
• Growth has outpaced population. The migrant share of the world rose from 2.9% (1990) to 3.7% (2024) even as the global population itself grew by more than 2.5 billion over the same period.

Methodology: What We Mean by "Expats" vs. Migrants, Refugees, and Nomads

Most confusion about migration statistics comes from mixing up categories that the source data keep separate. Here is how the terms are actually defined by the bodies that produce the numbers:

• International migrants (UN DESA, World Bank) — people living in a country other than their country of birth. This is the broadest category, and it includes labour migrants, international students, family migrants, and refugees. The 304 million headline figure refers to this group.
• Expats — an informal, popular term with no statistical definition. It usually describes people who live abroad by choice: skilled workers, retirees, entrepreneurs, digital nomads, and their families, typically for the longer term. The data here mostly tracks international migrants, with subsets (workers, students) called out where official figures exist.
• Refugees and forcibly displaced people (UNHCR) — people forced to move by conflict, persecution, violence, or disaster. Some cross international borders (refugees and asylum seekers); many do not (internally displaced people, or IDPs). They are tracked separately, for humanitarian rather than economic reasons.
• Digital nomads — remote workers who change countries frequently. There is no official UN, OECD, or government count; all population figures come from market research and industry surveys.

Because these groups overlap (a refugee is also an international migrant; a digital nomad may or may not be counted in any official stock), we are explicit throughout about which dataset each number comes from.

Primary datasets used in this guide

Every figure below is drawn from one of the following primary sources. We have linked each so you can verify the original:

• UN DESA — International Migrant Stock 2024 (total migrant counts and shares, by country).
• IOM — World Migration Report 2026 (global synthesis and narrative).
• ILO — Global Estimates on International Migrant Workers, 4th ed. (2024) (migrant workers, 2022 reference year).
• UNHCR — Global Trends 2024 (forced displacement).
• UNESCO Institute for Statistics (internationally mobile students, through 2023).
• World Bank / KNOMAD — Migration and Development Brief 40 (2024) (remittances).
• OECD — International Migration Outlook 2024 (reasons for migration to OECD countries).
• InterNations — Expat Insider 2025 (expat satisfaction rankings, survey-based).

Who Are the World's Expats? Workers, Students, Refugees, and Families

The 304 million figure is an umbrella. Underneath it are several distinct populations, each measured by a different specialised agency.

Migrant Workers

The largest identifiable subgroup is people who move to work. The ILO's most recent estimate puts the number of international migrant workers at 167.7 million in 2022 — about 4.7% of the global labour force, and an increase of more than 30 million since 2013. That means migrant workers account for well over half of all international migrants.

They are also highly concentrated: migrant workers cluster in high-income regions — North America, Western and Southern Europe, and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states — where labour demand and wage differentials are greatest. This concentration is what produces the destination patterns in the next section.

Forcibly Displaced People

A separate and sobering count comes from UNHCR. At the end of 2024, about 123.2 million people were forcibly displaced worldwide by conflict, persecution, violence, and disaster — refugees, asylum seekers, internally displaced people, and others in need of protection. That is roughly 1 in every 67 people on the planet.

For the first time in over a decade the trend edged down in 2025: UNHCR reported displacement easing to about 122 million by April 2025, driven by limited returns and reclassification in some contexts. Two caveats matter. First, only a portion of the displaced cross an international border — many are IDPs who never leave their own country and so do not appear in the international migrant stock. Second, displaced people are tracked for humanitarian reasons; very few would describe themselves as "expats" in the lifestyle sense, and conflating the two misreads both datasets.

International Students ("Education Expats")

Students are one of the fastest-growing migrant categories. According to UNESCO, the number of internationally mobile tertiary students rose from about 2.1 million in 2000 to nearly 7.3 million in 2023 — more than tripling in a generation. Even so, they represent only about 3% of all higher-education enrolment globally; studying abroad remains a minority experience.

Destinations are highly concentrated: roughly half of all international students are hosted by about ten countries — the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, Canada, France, Türkiye, China, the Netherlands, and the Republic of Korea. Many of these students become longer-term "education expats," transitioning to post-study work visas and, eventually, permanent residence — one of the most common on-ramps from temporary mobility to settled migration.

Where Do Expats Live? Top Destination Countries in 2024

There are two very different ways to rank destinations: by the absolute number of migrants a country hosts, and by the share of its population that is foreign-born. They produce almost completely different lists.

Table A: Top destination countries by number of migrants (2024)

#	Country	International migrants (2024)
1	United States	52.4 million
2	Germany	16.8 million
3	Saudi Arabia	13.7 million
4	United Kingdom	11.8 million
5	France	9.2 million
6	Spain	8.9 million
7	Canada	8.8 million
8	United Arab Emirates	8.2 million
9	Australia	8.1 million
10	Russian Federation	7.6 million
11	Türkiye	7.1 million
12	Italy	6.6 million

Source: UN DESA, International Migrant Stock 2024 (mid-2024). Countries with the largest migrant populations.

The United States hosts more international migrants than any other country — about 52.4 million, more than triple second-placed Germany. The IOM's World Migration Report 2026 frames the same picture: the U.S. holds the single largest share of the global migrant total, while the Gulf states have the highest proportions of foreign-born residents.

Table B: Top countries by foreign-born share of population (2024)

#	Country	Foreign-born share
1	Qatar	~77%
2	United Arab Emirates	~74%
3	Kuwait	~67%
4	Bahrain	~55%
5	Singapore	~43%
6	Saudi Arabia	~38%

Source: UN DESA, International Migrant Stock 2024 (migrant stock as a share of population, mid-2024). Shares are approximate and vary by source and vintage; several small territories (e.g., Monaco, Macao SAR) also exceed 60% but are usually excluded from country rankings.

The contrast is striking. The countries with the most migrants are large, wealthy economies. The countries that are most migrant are small, oil-rich Gulf states whose economies were built on foreign labour — in Qatar and the UAE, foreign-born residents outnumber citizens by roughly three to one.

The Best Countries for Expats in 2025 (Survey-Based Rankings)

The tables above count where migrants are. They say nothing about where migrants are happiest. For that we turn to the largest recurring expat survey, InterNations' Expat Insider 2025, which polled 10,085 expats across 172 nationalities living in 46 countries and ranked destinations across five indices: Quality of Life, Ease of Settling In, Working Abroad, Personal Finance, and Expat Essentials (digital life, admin, housing).

The 2025 top ten is dominated by Latin America and Southeast Asia, primarily on the strength of affordability, local friendliness, and ease of settling in:

#	Country	Region
1	Panama	Latin America
2	Colombia	Latin America
3	Mexico	Latin America
4	Thailand	Southeast Asia
5	Vietnam	Southeast Asia
6	China	East Asia
7	United Arab Emirates	Middle East
8	Indonesia	Southeast Asia
9	Spain	Europe
10	Malaysia	Southeast Asia

Source: InterNations Expat Insider 2025 (survey of 10,085 expats; fielded February 2025).

Notice what is absent: the high-income destinations that host the most migrants (the U.S., Germany, the U.K., Canada) rarely top satisfaction surveys, largely because of housing costs, bureaucracy, and the cost of settling in. We return to that tension in the section on challenges below.

Why People Move Abroad: Work, Family, Education, and Safety

People rarely move for a single reason, but the data does reveal the dominant channels. The clearest breakdown comes from the OECD, which tracks permanent migration into its 38 (mostly high-income) member countries. In 2023, OECD countries recorded a record ~6.5 million new permanent migrants — an all-time high (OECD International Migration Outlook 2024).

Of that total, permanent labour migration was just under 1.2 million (roughly 18%), while family migration was the single largest channel and humanitarian admissions rose sharply year-on-year. The newer 2025 Outlook reports that inflows eased somewhat from the 2023 peak.

Work and Career (Labour Migration)

Wage differentials and labour shortages are the engine of economic migration, which is why migrant workers concentrate in North America, Western Europe, and the Gulf. For Americans, "moving for work" increasingly means moving remotely — see our remote work tax guide and Florida residency for remote workers.

Love and Family (Family Migration)

Family reunification — spouses, children, and parents joining a migrant already settled abroad — is consistently the largest category of permanent migration to OECD countries. It is also the most stable, since it depends on relationships rather than economic cycles.

Education (Students)

As covered above, 7.3 million students studied outside their home country in 2023. Education is often the first step in a longer migration journey, converting into post-study work permits and, eventually, permanent residence.

Safety and Humanitarian Protection

The 123.2 million forcibly displaced people counted by UNHCR move not by choice but by necessity. Conflict, persecution, and increasingly climate-linked disasters drive this category, which the World Bank and IOM identify — alongside wage gaps and demographic imbalances — as one of the structural forces behind rising global migration.

Economic Impact: Remittances, Taxes, and Growth

The single biggest economic footprint of migration is money sent home. According to the World Bank and KNOMAD, remittances to low- and middle-income countries reached about $656 billion in 2023 (up 0.7% on 2022), rose to an estimated $685 billion in 2024, and pushed global remittances to roughly $905 billion (IOM World Migration Report 2026).

The scale is hard to overstate: remittances to low- and middle-income countries now exceed both foreign direct investment and official development assistance (foreign aid) combined. For dozens of countries, money sent home by migrants is the single largest source of external finance.

Table C: Top remittance-receiving countries (2023)

#	Country	Remittances received (2023)
1	India	$120 billion
2	Mexico	$66 billion
3	China	$50 billion
4	Philippines	$39 billion
5	Pakistan	$27 billion
6	Bangladesh	~$23 billion
7	Egypt	~$22 billion
8	Nigeria	~$20 billion
9	Guatemala	~$20 billion
10	Uzbekistan	~$16 billion

Source: World Bank/KNOMAD, Migration and Development Brief 40 (2024). Ranks 1–5 are reported figures; ranks 6–10 are approximate — confirm against the KNOMAD remittances database before reuse.

What Migrants Contribute in Their Destination Countries

Remittances flow out, but migrants also generate enormous value where they live. In the United States, the foreign-born make up roughly 19% of the labour force and, by Council on Foreign Relations and American Immigration Council estimates, generate on the order of $1.7 trillion in economic output and pay about $650 billion in taxes each year.

The Rise of Remote Expats and Digital Nomads

This is the most over-claimed corner of migration statistics, so we will be precise about what is known and what is not.

There is no official UN, OECD, or government count of digital nomads. Every population figure you see comes from industry surveys and market research, and the numbers swing wildly depending on definition — full-time versus part-time, minimum time abroad, employees versus freelancers. With that caveat, the credible estimates generally cluster in the 40–50 million range worldwide by the mid-2020s (some surveys run higher, toward 80 million; roughly 18 million are estimated to be American).

What is well-documented is the policy response. As of 2026, more than 50 countries offer a dedicated digital-nomad or remote-worker visa — from Portugal and Spain to Indonesia, the UAE, and dozens of others. Requirements typically include proof of around $850–$2,000 in monthly income (some European programmes require considerably more) and grant stays valid for one to three years. The number of countries with such a visa is a hard, verifiable figure; the size of the nomad population is not.

Challenges for Expats: Visas, Integration, and Cost of Living

The same InterNations 2025 data that crowns Latin America and Southeast Asia also exposes where the expat experience is hardest. High-income destinations — Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, the Nordics, and Italy — frequently rank near the bottom on Ease of Settling In and Personal Finance, weighed down by housing costs and bureaucracy. The countries at the top of the overall ranking earn their place largely on affordability and local friendliness rather than on high incomes.

OECD and national data confirm the pattern: housing costs and visa complexity have climbed across much of the high-income world, even as those same governments compete harder than ever for skilled migrants. The result is a widening gap between where it is desirable to live and where it is easy to settle.

That gap is exactly why many mobile professionals adopt a strategy of residency arbitrage: live where quality of life is high and costs are low, while anchoring your legal and tax home where the rules are simplest and least expensive. For Americans, the legal/tax anchor is the part you control most directly — your state of domicile.

Downloadable Data and How to Cite This Guide

The datasets behind this guide are free to use. We have packaged the core figures as plain CSV files so journalists, researchers, and students can work with them directly. If you use them, please cite the original sources (linked in each file and in the references below) and link back to this guide.

• International migrant stock, 1970–2024 (CSV) — the global series and share of world population. Source: UN DESA.
• Top destination countries by migrant stock, 2024 (CSV) — the figures in Table A. Source: UN DESA International Migrant Stock 2024.
• Top remittance-receiving countries, 2023 (CSV) — the figures in Table C. Source: World Bank/KNOMAD Brief 40.

How Your Tax Base Helps

Three hundred million people live outside their country of birth — and for the Americans among them, the hardest part is often not the move but the paperwork left behind. Your Tax Base helps U.S. citizens establish and maintain a defensible Florida domicile — the zero-income-tax legal home base behind a life lived abroad:

• A real Florida residential street address — not a P.O. box or mail-drop — with lease documentation and a utility bill in your name.
• Declaration of Domicile filing assistance under Florida Statutes §222.17.
• Mail scanning and forwarding so you receive everything sent to your Florida address, anywhere in the world.
• Audit-ready documentation designed to satisfy banks (KYC) and survive scrutiny from a former high-tax state.

Related Reading

For Americans Living Abroad

• Do Expats Pay State Taxes? Complete 2026 Guide
• US Expat Tax Filing Requirements 2026: Complete Checklist
• How to Change U.S. State Residency While Living Abroad
• Foreign Earned Income Exclusion 2026
• Key 2026 Updates for U.S. Expatriates

Choosing a Domicile State

• Best and Worst State Residency for Expats in 2026
• Best States for Tax Domicile: 2026 Guide for Expats & Nomads
• South Dakota Residency Guide for Digital Nomads
• State Tax Residency Rules: The Complete 50-State Guide

Establishing Florida Domicile

• How to Become a Florida Resident in 2026
• Florida Domicile Checklist: Every Step
• Florida Residency Requirements: No Minimum Day Requirement

Services & Tools

• Florida Residency Services — full domicile establishment and documentation
• US Expat Tax Guide — the pillar resource for Americans abroad
• State Tax Comparison Calculator — your savings, by state
• US Expat Tax Calculator — estimate your federal expat tax

Sources and References

1. UN DESA, Population Division — International Migrant Stock 2024 (migrant counts and shares; mid-2024).
2. IOM — World Migration Report 2026 (global synthesis; 304 million / 3.7%; remittances).
3. ILO — Global Estimates on International Migrant Workers, 4th edition (2024) (167.7 million migrant workers; reference year 2022).
4. UNHCR — Global Trends: Forced Displacement in 2024 (123.2 million displaced; June 2025).
5. UNESCO Institute for Statistics — internationally mobile students (7.3 million; 2023).
6. World Bank / KNOMAD — Migration and Development Brief 40 (remittances; June 2024).
7. OECD — International Migration Outlook 2024 (reasons for migration to OECD countries; November 2024).
8. InterNations — Expat Insider 2025 (expat satisfaction rankings; survey of 10,085 expats).
9. Council on Foreign Relations — How Does Immigration Affect the U.S. Economy? (U.S. labour-force share, output, and taxes; 2025).