A Record $35 Billion Came Home — While Fewer Workers Left

By the UISC BD Editorial Desk · Union Information Service Center, Bangladesh · Published 9 September 2026 · 6-minute read

Bangladesh received more than $35 billion in remittances in FY2025-26 — a record.

In the same period, the number of workers leaving for overseas jobs fell to a five-year low. Understanding why both are true at once explains a great deal about the country's economy.

The Two Numbers

According to BMET, more than 9.69 lakh people left Bangladesh for overseas work in the last fiscal year — down 5 percent year-on-year, and well below the FY2024 peak when nearly 12 lakh departed, the highest on record.

The slowdown began around March, driven by regional conflict and the disruption of flights to Middle Eastern destinations.

Yet money sent home reached an all-time high.

Why Remittances Rose While Departures Fell

Remittance inflows reflect the stock of Bangladeshis already working abroad — several million people — not the flow of new departures in any single year. A worker who left in 2019 is still sending money in 2026.

Two additional factors matter. Policy has pushed steadily to move transfers from informal channels — the hundi system — into formal banking, through cash incentives for repatriating earnings through banks. Every taka shifted from informal to formal channels appears as an increase in recorded remittances without any change in what workers actually earn.

And the mobile financial services network has made receiving money formally far easier for a family in a village than it was a decade ago.

The Concentration Risk

The vulnerability in this system is stated plainly in Bangladeshi reporting: Saudi Arabia is currently the only market actively recruiting Bangladeshi workers, with most other destinations effectively closed.

Historically the principal destinations have been Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates — a concentration in a single region that makes the entire flow sensitive to Gulf economic conditions, regional conflict, and individual countries' labour policy decisions.

A record remittance year built on a narrowing destination base is a strong result resting on a fragile structure.

The Diversification Response

The government is undertaking a programme from fiscal 2026-27 to expand overseas employment, diversify labour markets, improve skills and strengthen migrant worker welfare services.

Of those four, skills is the one that changes the economics rather than just the geography. Bangladeshi migration has been dominated by low-skilled temporary labour — which pays the least, offers the weakest protections, and is the first category cut when a destination economy slows.

Higher-skilled migration pays multiples more per worker and opens destinations beyond the Gulf. It is also the harder policy to execute, since it requires training and certification recognised by receiving countries before departure.

What $35 Billion Actually Does

Remittances are the most direct poverty-reduction mechanism Bangladesh has. The money arrives in household hands without passing through a government programme or a bank's lending decision, and it is spent on education, housing, healthcare and small business formation.

At the macro level it funds imports and stabilises foreign exchange reserves. At the consumer level it is a substantial part of why Bangladesh is heading toward ninth place among world consumer markets — $35 billion landing directly in household budgets is purchasing power that shows up immediately in demand for food, electronics, housing and services.

The Untapped Part

Most of that $35 billion goes into consumption, property and savings rather than productive enterprise.

As covered in our guide to investment routes, individual and diaspora investment is the least-developed of the three channels into Bangladesh — despite being the one with by far the largest pool of capital behind it. Channelling even a modest share of remittance flows into formal business investment would represent one of the largest available sources of domestic capital in the country.

Sources

• "Overseas jobs fall to five-year low amid Middle East uncertainty," The Daily Star — thedailystar.net
• "Bangladesh plans new overseas job destinations, migrant workers' welfare," UNB — unb.com.bd
• "Bangladesh's Economic Vitality Owes in Part to Migration and Remittances," Migration Policy Institute — migrationpolicy.org
• "Low-skilled temporary migration policies: The case of Bangladesh," World Bank — worldbank.org