Bangladesh Sends Record Number of Workers to Saudi Arabia in 2025

Bangladesh sent over 750,000 workers to Saudi Arabia in 2025, marking the highest overseas deployment to a single country in the nation’s history, the Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training (BMET) said on Friday.

Around 3.5 million Bangladeshis currently live and work in Saudi Arabia, sending home more than $5 billion annually. The Kingdom has been a key destination for Bangladeshi labor since the 1970s, and Bangladeshis now make up the largest expatriate community in Saudi Arabia.

Last year, Saudi Arabia retained its position as the top destination for Bangladeshi workers. Of more than 1.1 million citizens who went abroad for work in 2025, more than two-thirds chose the Kingdom.

“More than 750,000 Bangladeshi migrants went to Saudi Arabia last year,” Ashraf Hossain, additional director-general at BMET, told Arab News. “So far, it’s the highest number for Bangladesh, in terms of sending migrants to Saudi Arabia or any other particular country in a single year.”

The number also reflects a 16 percent increase from 2024, when about 628,000 workers went to Saudi Arabia. The growth strengthens Bangladesh’s position as the country with the largest diaspora community in the Kingdom outside of its own borders.

Authorities in Bangladesh have focused on expanding the skilled workforce sent to Saudi Arabia, following the launch of the Saudi Skill Verification Program in 2023. The initiative assesses and certifies professional competence of workers, helping ensure employment in specialized roles.

“Our focus is now on increasing safe, skilled, and regular migration,” Hossain said. “Skilled manpower export to Saudi Arabia has increased in the last year. More than one-third of the migrants who went to Saudi Arabia did so under the Skill Verification Program by the Saudi agency Takamol.”

BMET has expanded certification centers from one to 28 nationwide, raising monthly capacity to certify around 60,000 skilled workers. Previously, only about 1,000 workers were certified monthly.

Bangladesh has also begun training workers in mining, preparing to meet demand in Saudi Arabia’s oil-rich sectors. “There are huge demands for skilled mining workers in Saudi Arabia,” Hossain said. “We are trying to produce truly skilled workers for the Saudi labor market.”

In October, Saudi Arabia and Bangladesh signed a new employment agreement that strengthens protections for workers, improves wage payments, and enhances welfare and health services. The agreement also opens more opportunities in construction and other Vision 2030 projects, potentially creating up to 300,000 new jobs for Bangladeshi workers in 2026.

The record deployment underlines the importance of Saudi Arabia as a destination for Bangladesh’s overseas workforce and highlights the growing emphasis on sending skilled professionals to meet international labor demands.