750,000 Bangladeshi workers went to Saudi Arabia in 2025, which is 16% more than the number of Bangladeshis going to Saudi Arabia in 2024. Saudi Arabia took the largest number of workers from Bangladesh in 2025.
This is the highest record of sending foreign workers to any single country, according to the relevant authorities.
Currently, about 3.5 million Bangladeshis live and work in Saudi Arabia, sending more than $5 billion in remittances to Bangladesh every year. Last year, Bangladeshi workers chose Saudi Arabia as their top destination, and more than two-thirds of the more than 1.1 million workers who went abroad in 2025 chose Saudi Arabia.
Ashraf Hossain, Additional Director General of the Manpower, Employment and Training Bureau, said, “Last year, more than 750,000 Bangladeshi migrants went to Saudi Arabia.”
“So far, this is the highest number of migrants sent by Bangladesh to Saudi Arabia or any other country in a year.” In recent years, authorities have focused on sending more skilled workers to Saudi Arabia, after launching a skills verification program in Bangladesh in 2023 to improve the professional skills of workers in the Saudi labor market.
Bangladesh has also increased the number of certification centers, which has enabled more candidates to be verified by Saudi authorities.
“Our goal now is to increase safe, skilled and regular migration. The export of skilled manpower to Saudi Arabia has increased in the past year ... More than a third of the migrants who went to Saudi Arabia did so under the skills verification program of the Saudi agency Takamal,” Hossain said.
“Just three to four months ago, we used to go to certify only 1,000 skilled workers per month. But now, we can conduct the tests through 28 (Saudi-approved) centers across the country, which can certify about 60,000 skilled workers (monthly) for the kingdom’s labor market.”
BMET has already started providing training this year, as Bangladesh aims to start sending skilled workers to Saudi Arabia in this sector.
“Being an oil-rich country, there is a huge demand for skilled mining workers in Saudi Arabia,” said Hossain. He added that we are trying to create truly skilled workers for the Saudi labor market and this effort will continue.
