304 million. That is the number of people the United Nations counted living outside their country of birth as of mid-2024, the highest figure ever recorded and the number every other statistic in this article measures itself against. It is a large number in absolute terms, roughly equivalent to the fourth-largest country on Earth if migrants were their own nation, yet a small one in relative terms: just 3.7% of humanity. This piece answers the single question packed into that headline figure as precisely as the data allows, then unpacks what sits behind it: who counts as a migrant, how the total has grown, where these 304 million people actually live, where they came from, and what the raw count leaves out.
The Global Migrant Population at a Glance
| Metric | Figure | Year |
|---|---|---|
| Global international migrant stock | 304 million | 2024 |
| Share of world population | 3.7% | 2024 |
| Growth since 2020 | +10.4% | 2020-2024 |
| Growth since 1990 | nearly doubled (from 153.9 million) | 1990-2024 |
| Female share of migrants | 48.08% | 2024 |
| Migrants forcibly displaced across a border | 51.7 million (~1 in 6) | 2024 |
| Top destination country | United States, 52 million | 2024 |
| Top origin country | India, 18-18.5 million | 2024 |
Source: UN DESA, International Migrant Stock 2024.
What Counts as a Migrant?
The UN defines an international migrant as any person who has changed their country of usual residence, living outside the country in which they were born (or, where birthplace data is unavailable, outside the country of their citizenship) for at least one year. This definition is deliberately broad. It does not require legal authorization, a specific visa category, or an intention to settle permanently. A construction worker on a two-year contract in Qatar, a retiree who relocated to Portugal, and a refugee who fled across a border all count identically as international migrants under this framework, even though their circumstances, rights and reasons for moving could not be more different.
Migrant stock estimates are drawn mainly from population censuses and register data on foreign-born population, meaning people counted by where they were born rather than their current citizenship. Where birthplace data is unavailable, the UN substitutes estimates of the noncitizen population instead. This substitution matters: a long-settled foreign-born resident who has naturalized still counts as a migrant under the birthplace method, but might not under a citizenship-based method, which is one reason migrant totals can differ meaningfully depending on which underlying national dataset a country reports.
How the Global Migrant Population Has Changed
The growth trajectory below shows an accelerating pattern, not a steady one.
Global Migrant Stock Over Time
| Year | Estimated Migrants | Share of World Population |
|---|---|---|
| 1970 | ~84 million | ~2.3% |
| 1990 | ~153.9 million | ~2.9% |
| 2020 | ~275 million | ~3.5% |
| 2024 | 304 million | 3.7% |
Source: UN DESA, International Migrant Stock 2024; Migration Policy Institute.
Between 1990 and 2024, the absolute number of international migrants roughly doubled, while the migrant share of world population rose by less than one full percentage point, from 2.9% to 3.7%, evidence that migration has grown broadly in step with, and only slightly faster than, overall population growth for most of that period. That pattern broke sharply in the most recent four-year window: the 10.4% growth in migrant stock between 2020 and 2024 outpaced total world population growth (3.5%) by roughly three to one, a period that coincided with both a rebound in labor migration following pandemic-era travel restrictions and record levels of conflict-driven forced displacement.
One methodological note worth flagging: part of the historical growth in recorded migrant stock reflects changes in political borders rather than actual movement of people. The breakup of the Soviet Union alone added an estimated 27 million people to the 2000 global migrant total, because a person born in Soviet Ukraine and living in Russia was reclassified from an internal migrant to an international one purely by the redrawing of borders, without that person having moved at all.
Where the World’s Migrants Live
Migrant destinations are far more concentrated than migrant origins. The top five destination countries alone account for roughly a third of the world’s entire migrant population.
Top Migrant Destination Countries, 2024
| Rank | Country | Migrant Population |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | 52 million |
| 2 | Germany | 17 million |
| 3 | Saudi Arabia | 14 million |
| 4 | United Kingdom | 12 million |
| 5 | France | 9 million |
| 6 | Türkiye | 7.1 million |
| 7 | Italy | 6.6 million |
Source: UN DESA, International Migrant Stock 2024: Key facts and figures.
This top five list has stayed unchanged since the 2020 estimate, even as every one of the five countries recorded further increases in its migrant population over the intervening four years, a sign of durable, self-reinforcing migration systems rather than a rapidly shifting landscape. Canada, Australia, the Russian Federation, the United Arab Emirates and Spain have consistently ranked among the top ten destination countries across the whole 2015-2024 decade, though their relative order within that group has shifted from one estimate round to the next.
By region, Asia hosted the largest number of migrants of any continent at mid-2024, 92.2 million, up from 84.7 million in 2020. Africa hosted 29.2 million, up 15% from 25.3 million in 2020, growth that was overwhelmingly intra-regional: 86% of migrants residing in Africa in 2024 had come from elsewhere in Africa.
Where Migrants Come From
Origin countries paint a more dispersed picture than destinations, spread across a wider set of significant sources.
Top Migrant Origin Countries, 2024
| Rank | Country of Origin | Emigrants Abroad | Share of Global Migrants |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | India | 18.5 million | ~6.1% |
| 2 | China | 11.7 million | ~3.8% |
| 3 | Mexico | 11.6 million | ~3.8% |
| 4 | Ukraine | 9.8 million | ~3.2% |
| 5 | Russian Federation | 9.1 million | ~3.0% |
Source: UN DESA, International Migrant Stock 2024; Migration Policy Institute.
Ukraine’s presence in the top five is a recent development entirely, and one of the clearest statistical fingerprints of the 2022 war visible in global migration data: the number of Ukrainian emigrants grew by 124% between mid-2020 and mid-2024, by far the largest percentage increase among the world’s top ten origin countries over that period. Venezuela (+52.1%) and Afghanistan (+31.4%) posted the next-largest increases, both also tied closely to conflict, political instability and economic collapse rather than voluntary labor migration. At the other end of the scale, Mexico’s emigrant population grew just 1.3% over the same four years, reflecting a far more mature, stable migration relationship with the United States that has slowed considerably compared with its rapid growth in earlier decades.
Migrants by Age and Sex
International migrants skew heavily toward working age, a pattern consistent across almost every major destination and origin country, reflecting that labor and family formation remain the dominant drivers of migration globally. The female share of the global migrant population stood at 48.08% in 2024, essentially unchanged from 47.97% in 2020, though this global average masks a sharp regional and structural split. In Europe, the female share of migrants reaches roughly 52%, exceeding male migrants, driven by care-work migration, family reunification and the longer-settled, more balanced nature of many European migration corridors. In Asia, the female share falls to roughly 42%, driven heavily by the Gulf Cooperation Council states, where migrant labor in construction and security is overwhelmingly male.
Migrant Sex Composition by Destination Type
| Destination Pattern | Migrant Sex Skew | Example Countries |
|---|---|---|
| Europe and Northern America | Female-majority migrant populations | United States, Canada, France, Spain, Italy |
| Gulf Cooperation Council states | Strongly male-majority migrant populations | Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait |
| India (as a destination) | Female-majority migrant population | India |
Source: IOM World Migration Report, citing UN DESA data on migrants by sex, top 20 destination and origin countries.
Why the Migrant Population Is Growing
Not all growth in the recorded migrant stock reflects new movement of people. Three distinct forces drive the upward trend, and they are worth disentangling:
- Genuine new migration, including labor migration into Gulf states and elsewhere, family reunification, and student migration that converts into longer-term residency.
- Forced displacement, which has grown to unprecedented levels: 51.7 million people, about one in six international migrants worldwide, had been forcibly displaced across a border by 2024, the highest share since UNHCR’s data series began in the 1950s.
- Statistical and political reclassification, such as the Soviet Union’s breakup adding 27 million people to the global count without any actual movement, or improved census methodology in a given country revising its migrant count upward without a real change in migration levels.
Disentangling these three drivers matters for interpreting any year-over-year change in the headline figure: a large jump in one country’s recorded migrant stock could reflect a genuine surge in arrivals, a refugee crisis, or simply a more accurate census.
Migrants as a Share of National Populations
Absolute migrant population and migrant population share tell different, sometimes contradictory stories, and both are necessary to understand a country’s migration profile.
Highest Migrant Shares of National Population, Approx. Mid-2020s
| Country | Migrant Share of Population |
|---|---|
| United Arab Emirates | ~74-89% (estimates vary by source and year) |
| Qatar | ~76.7-78% |
| Kuwait | ~67-73% |
| Bahrain | ~52-55% |
| Luxembourg | ~47-51% |
| Singapore | ~43-46% |
| Oman | ~46.5% |
Note: figures vary across sources because of differing definitions (foreign-born vs. noncitizen) and reference years; ranges reflect this variation rather than measurement error alone.
The United States illustrates the gap between the two measures clearly: it hosts more migrants in absolute terms than any other country on Earth, 52 million, yet migrants make up only around 15 to 17% of its total population, far below the shares recorded in Gulf states or small city-states, simply because its overall population base of roughly 340 million is so much larger. A country can therefore be the world’s largest migrant destination and, at the same time, a fairly low-ranking country by migrant share, a distinction that matters enormously for how migration is experienced locally and discussed politically.
What the Numbers Do Not Tell Us
The 304 million figure, precise as it appears, has real limits worth stating plainly:
- Undocumented migration is inherently difficult to count. Migrant stock estimates rely on census and register data, which by their nature undercounts people without legal status who may avoid being recorded.
- Temporary and circular mobility does not map cleanly onto a stock-based measurement. Someone who moves seasonally between two countries may be captured differently depending on exactly when a census or survey catches them.
- Definitional inconsistency between countries reporting foreign-born population versus those reporting noncitizen population means the underlying methodology is not perfectly uniform across all 233 countries and areas in the dataset.
- Stock is not flow. The 304 million figure describes how many people are currently living abroad, not how many crossed a border in the most recent year, a distinction essential for interpreting any claim about migration “surging” or “slowing” based on the stock figure alone.
Key Findings
- The global migrant population reached a record 304 million in 2024, 3.7% of the world’s population, growing 10.4% since 2020, nearly three times faster than total world population growth over the same period.
- The United States alone hosts about 17% of all international migrants worldwide, 52 million people, more than the next four destination countries combined.
- India is the world’s single largest source of migrants, with 18.5 million citizens living abroad, ahead of China and Mexico at roughly 11.6-11.7 million each.
- Ukraine’s emigrant population grew 124% between 2020 and 2024, the fastest increase among any of the world’s top ten origin countries, a direct statistical signature of the war.
- Women made up 48.08% of the global migrant population in 2024, but that average masks a sharp split: about 52% in Europe versus around 42% in Asia, reflecting very different migration corridors by sex.
- Part of the historical growth in migrant stock reflects political reclassification rather than genuine movement, most notably the roughly 27 million people added to the 2000 global count purely by the Soviet Union’s breakup into independent states.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. How many migrants are in the world?
An estimated 304 million people were living outside their country of birth as of mid-2024, according to the UN Population Division, the highest figure ever recorded.
2. What percentage of the world population are migrants?
International migrants made up 3.7% of the world’s population in 2024, up slightly from 3.5% in 2020 and 2.9% in 1990.
3. Which country has the most migrants?
The United States hosts the largest number of international migrants of any country, about 52 million as of 2024, roughly 17% of the entire global migrant stock.
4. Which country has the highest migrant share of its population?
Depending on the exact dataset and year, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar alternate as the country with the highest migrant share, both in the range of roughly 75 to 89% of their total resident population.
5. Has the migrant population increased?
Yes. It grew from about 275 million in 2020 to 304 million in 2024, a 10.4% increase that outpaced global population growth (3.5%) by roughly three to one over the same period.
6. Where do most of the world’s migrants come from?
India is the single largest country of origin, with about 18.5 million citizens living abroad in 2024, followed by China and Mexico, each around 11.6 to 11.7 million.
7. Are men or women more likely to migrate?
Globally the split is close to even, 48.08% female in 2024, but this varies sharply by region: migrants in Europe are majority female (around 52%), while migrants in Asia, driven heavily by Gulf labor migration, are majority male (around 58%).
8. Why did the migrant population grow so much faster after 2020 than in previous decades?
The 2020-2024 period combined a rebound in labor migration following pandemic-era travel restrictions with record levels of forced displacement, particularly from Ukraine, Venezuela and Afghanistan, pushing migrant stock growth to roughly three times the rate of overall world population growth.
9. Does the migrant total include refugees?
Yes. International migrant stock estimates include refugees. As of 2024, about 51.7 million people, roughly one in six international migrants worldwide, had been forcibly displaced across a border.
10. Why do migrant population rankings sometimes look different across sources?
Different sources use different reference years, and some report foreign-born population while others report noncitizen population, which can diverge meaningfully, especially in countries with large numbers of naturalized former migrants.
Sources
- United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA), Population Division, International Migrant Stock 2024: Key facts and figures, 2025
- UN DESA, International Migrant Stock 2024 dataset, via migrationdataportal.org
- Migration Policy Institute, “Top Statistics on Global Migration and Migrants,” 2025
- Migration Policy Institute, “Top 25 Countries with the Most International Migrants and Highest Migrant Share of the Total Population, 1960-2024”
- IOM, World Migration Report 2024 and 2026, “International migrants: numbers and trends”
- Our World in Data, “Total number of international immigrants,” UN DESA 2024
