Brain drain in Asia while gov’t policies fumble

High-income countries like the United States, Canada, and China are competing for labor by launching immigration schemes, including offering high salaries and a better quality of life for skilled workers from around the world.

TechBehemoths, a German platform matching information technology companies with its clients, revealed that Switzerland and the US pay the most for IT positions, with an average range of $100,000 to $120,000 a year. Canada, Singapore, Australia, and Japan also offer competitive rates, and even sponsor visas and work permits to attract needed personnel.

But such brain drain has a negative influence not just on the individuals who leave, but also on the economic development of their home countries. According to Talent Square Asia (2023), Southeast Asian countries are facing brain drain issues as highly skilled workers migrate to Singapore. Malaysia is one of the most affected countries in the region, with its brain drain rate of 5.5 percent of its population, significantly higher than the global average of 3.3 percent in 2023.

According to data from Indonesia’s Directorate General of Immigration, nearly 4,000 Indonesians became Singaporean citizens between 2019 to 2022. In April 2024, Indonesia announced that it might offer dual citizenship to attract overseas workers.

The rising star of Southeast Asia, Vietnam, has also been affected by the brain drain situation. Of the 350,000 international students in the region, 132,000 are Vietnamese. Indonesia and Malaysia both have 56,000, while Thailand has 32,000, according to Nikkei Asia (2024).

The brain drain crisis has weakened Vietnam’s economy as students sponsored by the government to study overseas rarely go back, as they are drawn to the foreign countries’ superior infrastructure and greater earnings. To tackle this issue, Vietnam invested in training local workers by providing a fund that would include reimbursement of up to 50 percent for upskilling workers.

In the Philippines, migrant workers have been significant contributors to the nation’s economy for several years, with it being the world’s fourth-largest recipient of remittances in 2023, that accounted for 9 percent of the country’s GDP.

The demand for Filipino health-care workers soared during the pandemic, with around 3,300 nursing experts deployed in 2020 in Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, and Germany. This number is predicted to grow further owing to the huge wage gap between local and foreign employers. The salary of entry-level nurses in the Philippines was just $520, compared with about $1,700 to $3,000 in the UK.

To battle the nursing staff scarcity, the government has set a 7,000-person yearly cap on newly hired health-care personnel deployed abroad in 2020.

Thailand, too, has recently seen many young professionals and skilled workers seeking international opportunities. According to the Agenda Team, in 2021, 121,922 Thai people were working abroad, an increase of 28,997 people in a single year.

Many polls and the youth movement in Thailand such as “Let’s move abroad,” a Facebook group with nearly 1.1 million members, show that many Thai talents are considering leaving the country. The trigger factors for such thinking include hectic politics that resulted in youth protests against the government in 2020-2021, and the economic downturn in the aftermath of the pandemic.

The changing shape of the world economy due to the trend of both an aging society and technology has made the war for talent a hot issue that policymakers around the world are watching.

A 2024 survey by Manpower Group revealed a 76-percent talent shortage in the IT and technology sector globally. This has created pressure for labor competition, prompting many countries around the world to relax regulations on importing skilled foreign workers and use proactive measures such as tax incentives and grants to attract the best and the brightest talents to their countries.

According to Secretary to the Prime Minister, Phongsaran Asavachaisophon in October 2018, even though Thailand has a lower brain drain rate than other countries in the region, businesses in the country still face the problem of a shortage of highly skilled and specialized workers, especially in the IT field.

Research conducted by ManpowerGroup in 2021 showed that Thailand produces 570,000 graduates from computer-related programs each year, but only 15 percent of them work in the IT area.

And while global employers are fiercely competing for top talents. Thailand appears to be merely observing the situation without implementing a clear strategy.

“The idea that foreigners are a threat to Thai people’s jobs is a major obstacle that blocks opportunities for the country’s development, because what is more frightening [than that] … is losing the country’s ability to compete with others, and that would result in Thai people losing their jobs,” said Patcharaporn Leepipatpaiboon, a senior economist at Bank of Thailand. The Nation/Asia News Network

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The Philippine Daily Inquirer is a member of the Asia News Network, an alliance of 22 media titles in the region.