A record 102,863 Bangladeshi workers went abroad in November - the highest outflow of workers in a single month in the last four years.
With overseas employment rising, the migration sector counted a total of 485,895 jobs in the 11 months (January-November) of the current calendar year, according to statistics of the Bureau of Manpower Employment and Training (BMET).
Saudi Arabia is hiring the largest portion of Bangladeshi workers under an extended quota. For this reason, the scope of overseas jobs has increased nowadays, manpower recruiters said.
They hoped they would be able to send another 100,000 in December, totalling nearly 600,000 by the end of the year.
This is to mention that the monthly outflow of Bangladeshi workers hit six-digit numbers for the first time in March, 2017, reaching 106,501, according to the monthly data available on BMET website since 2012.
The manpower bureau data revealed that around 65,233 workers went to different job-destination countries in October alone this year, while 42,008 in September.
On the other hand, only 217,669 workers could go abroad with jobs in the entire 2020, as air travel from the job destination countries remained suspended for a certain time following the Covid-19 outbreak.
Saudi Arabia, the largest job destination country for Bangladesh, hired 71,725 workers in November, while 370,015 in the 11 months of this year.
However, manpower recruiters said they currently had fresh demand notes of more than 50,000 workers from the Arab country.
The recruiters said they would be able to send a notable number of workers to that country in the coming months.
At the same time, they also expressed concern over the new Coronavirus variant 'Omicron' that was detected in Saudi Arabia last week.
Both Bangladesh and Saudi Arabia will handle the situation sincerely so that this variant cannot spread, they hoped.
Ali Haider Chowdhury, former secretary general of the Bangladesh Association of International Recruiting Agencies (BAIRA), said the trend in the outflow of workers would continue in the remaining month of this year.
If the recruiters can continue sending workers smoothly, the country will see nearly 600,000 jobs in 2021, he added.
Bangladesh sends workers mainly to 17 to 18 countries; of those, the majority goes to the Gulf states.
Meanwhile, the country has become the 6th largest manpower-sending country and the 8th largest remittance-receiving country in the world in 2020, according to World Migration Report 2022.
