Out-migration and brain drain from Bhutan

Bhutan has, since the early 2020s, faced an accelerating wave of out-migration by young, educated and skilled citizens, chiefly to Australia — largely on student visas — and to Canada. Because those leaving are disproportionately graduates and public-sector professionals, the phenomenon is widely discussed as a brain drain that threatens the staffing of Bhutan's civil service, schools and health system. Prime Minister Tshering Tobgay has called the departure of citizens in their prime working years an existential threat, warning that a sustained outflow could undermine the country's population, security and sovereignty.^[1]

The trend is distinct from the older story of the Lhotshampa diaspora created by the refugee crisis of the 1990s: this is voluntary economic and educational migration by Bhutanese citizens, concentrated in a few destination countries and a short span of years.

Scale and destinations

The Bhutanese population in Australia more than doubled between 2020 and 2024, rising above 25,000, and Australian universities enrolled more than 13,400 Bhutanese students in the first nine months of 2024 alone. Remittances reflect the shift: between August 2023 and October 2024 Bhutanese abroad sent home around US$210 million, of which roughly US$132 million came from Australia.^[2] Migrants are markedly better educated than the population as a whole: more than half hold university degrees, against about 7 per cent of the working-age population, and nearly half had previously worked in the civil service.^[3]

Impact on public services

The loss has fallen heavily on the public sector. In 2024 almost 70 per cent of all voluntary resignations from the civil service came from the education and health sectors. In the schools, the Ministry of Education announced in March 2025 plans to rehire retired and resigned teachers to fill more than 1,100 vacancies, after some schools had gone months without subject teachers. In health, the ministry told Parliament in mid-2024 that it might need to recruit foreign medical professionals to cover a shortage of around 172 doctors and specialists and several hundred nurses.^[1]

Causes

The drivers are partly economic — higher wages and study-and-work opportunities abroad — but observers and migrants themselves point also to what has been described as systemic dysfunction at home: rigid bureaucracy, limited career mobility, modest public-sector pay, and a perceived lack of meritocracy. The pressures connect to wider concerns about youth unemployment and the gap between rising educational attainment and the opportunities available within a small economy.^[4]

Response and significance

The government has treated out-migration as a central policy challenge, linking it to economic-transformation plans intended to create higher-value jobs and retain talent, while bodies such as the World Bank have argued that the right reforms could allow Bhutan to benefit from migration — through remittances, skills and return — rather than simply lose from it.^[5] The episode has nonetheless prompted soul-searching about whether the development model associated with Gross National Happiness is delivering the opportunities its educated young citizens expect.

References

1. Bhutan's Australian Dream: Outmigration Reaches Critical Levels — Newsreel Asia
2. Bhutan grapples with void left by Australia-bound public servants — Nikkei Asia
3. The quiet exodus: Why young, skilled, and educated Bhutanese leave — Asia News Network
4. The Paradox of Bhutan's Australian Dream — The Diplomat
5. Reforms can Help Bhutan Benefit from Sustainable Migration — The World Bank