Global talent is on the move—especially those with university-level degrees, STEM professionals, and AI experts. Because leadership in technology and business hinges on access to top talent, that’s good news for companies and nations around the world.
But fewer of the world’s best and brightest are moving these days. While roughly 2.6 million highly skilled professionals relocated across borders in 2024 (representing about 1.3% of the global pool of the 205 million that we are able to track), the pace of cross-border mobility slowed by 0.4% since we published the last edition of BCG’s Top Talent Tracker.
In this edition, we introduce a novel, data-driven ranking: BCG’s top ten global talent hubs. In this new ranking, we bring together survey data on people’s dream destinations, expert assessments of countries’ visa systems, and actual data on people’s real-time movement.
The decision to move abroad for work is typically not a sudden one. Highly skilled professionals reflect upon and plan their moves, so the trends that we see capture long-held desires that may defy short-term challenges. The impetus to move to growth hubs remains strong, and powerful incentives remain in place to inspire and enable highly skilled talent to make global moves.
The overall slowdown in global mobility reflects growing global headwinds. Rising interest rates, economic uncertainty, and reduced hiring momentum in tech and services are all playing a role. Our data captures all of 2024; thus, it does not capture any potential effects on global mobility caused by visa changes discussed in the US, Canada, and the UK. (For more information, see “About Our Research.”)
About Our Research
Our research then zeroes in on two critical groups: STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) and AI (artificial intelligence) professionals. These groups are not only in the highest demand—they’re also the most mobile. In the past year, about 2.6 million highly skilled professionals (1.3% of the tracked population) crossed borders for work. But look closer: STEM talent moved at a higher rate of 2%, and AI talent remains the most mobile, with 2.4% changing countries—nearly double the rate of other highly skilled professionals.
- STEM talent includes those working in research, engineering, IT, or product roles.
- AI talent is defined more narrowly, focusing on individuals with at least one skill in cutting-edge fields such as deep learning, computer vision, PyTorch, Hadoop, reinforcement learning, neural networks, MapReduce, or high-performance computing. This deliberately excludes many end-users of AI and focuses instead on those operating at the frontier of AI development.
The analysis places a special emphasis on more than 25 priority countries, including Australia, Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, China, Egypt, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the UAE, the UK, and the US.
Updates since our last edition include an increase in the tracked population (from approximately 200 million to about 205 million) and a more current data window (through the end of 2024).
Specialized tech talent tells a different story. Among this group, movement is accelerating: More than 727,000 STEM professionals (2% of overall highly skilled people) and more than 33,000 AI experts (2.4%) moved across borders—with STEM mobility rising (by 6%) and AI talent nearly twice as mobile as the broader skilled workforce.
Our research continues to show a clear pattern: countries that are more open to global talent tend to innovate faster and grow stronger. In fact, a country that leads in attracting talent in a specific tech field is 17 times more likely to lead in that technology overall. The US remains the global front-runner—but other countries, especially those in the Gulf, are catching up quickly.
Our ranking of top global talent hubs also underlines a recurring theme: While the US continues to be the top target destination, European countries tend to stagnate, and the UAE as well as Saudi Arabia are gaining popularity—on track to overtake some European countries.
The race for global talent is not a zero-sum game, since nations benefit from both attracting skilled immigrants and building strategic networks of emigrants. Winning this competition requires a conscious play and a joint effort across public and private sectors.
Private-sector leaders should ask:
- Are talent and talent development truly top priorities for us?
- Do we lack the right talent (for example, in digital or GenAI)? What’s the financial impact?
- What is our employee value proposition—what promise can we make to highly skilled workers?
Public-sector
leaders of top talent destination countries and cities should ask:
- Do we have a fit-for-purpose immigration system for highly skilled workers?
- How can we build state- and city-level innovation hubs to attract talent?
- How could we use talent funds to incentivize companies to attract and retain talent?
Public-sector leaders of top talent origin countries should ask:
- How can we upskill our workforces to find meaningful work at home and abroad?
- Do we have a clear talent brand to attract and reattract talent?
- How can we enhance companies’ capacity to retain our best talent?
The global competition for top talent is already in full swing, but the outcome is far from decided. The true winners will be those that set clear objectives and lead the way with innovative approaches, such as talent funds, before others catch on. BCG’s Top Talent Tracker is designed to guide those who are ready to embrace this new era of competition for technological, economic, and geostrategic advantage.
