Talent has always moved. What’s changed is the pace, the scale, and the way that movement actually happens.
The traditional model is still around. A company identifies a role overseas, selects an employee, negotiates a relocation package, and waits months for the move to go through. It still takes up a meaningful portion of mobility budgets.
But it’s no longer the default approach, and it’s definitely not where most of the momentum is.
What’s replacing it is a much broader mix. Short-term assignments. Remote-first international roles. Hybrid cross-border setups. And increasingly, what many now call e-migration, where employees work for companies in other countries without physically relocating.
The mechanics of mobility have changed. Compliance has become more complex. But at the same time, the upside for companies has expanded.
This article pulls together verified data from BCG, Mercer, Cartus, EY, Deloitte, ManpowerGroup, the World Economic Forum, and the United Nations to give a clear view of where workforce mobility stands today. The data is sourced directly, and more importantly, interpreted with practical use in mind.
A couple of patterns stand out. Mobility hasn’t slowed down. Around 70% of organizations report that their global mobility activity either held steady or increased in recent time. What has changed is the mix. Long-term relocations have leveled off, while shorter, more flexible, and often location-independent arrangements are gaining ground.
For HR leaders, mobility heads, and global hiring teams, the takeaway is hard to ignore. Mobility is no longer just about moving people from one place to another. It’s become a core part of how companies access, deploy, and retain talent. And the data is starting to reflect that shift quite clearly.
Global Mobility and Migration Landscape
The stock of people living outside their country of birth stood at 304 million by mid-2024, according to the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. That figure, the most current global estimate available, covers all categories of international movement: labor migration, family reunification, humanitarian flows, and asylum.
As a share of total world population it represents 3.7%, only marginally higher than in 1990 when UN DESA began collecting these estimates.
For HR leaders, the macro figure matters less than the dynamics running underneath it. Corporate talent mobility is a distinct and relatively small subset of total global migration.
But it operates within the same visa systems, border controls, and policy environments that shape all cross-border movement. When those systems tighten, as they have recently in Canada and the United Kingdom, the effects land directly on mobility programs and hiring timelines.
The most significant update in the current data is a reversal. BCG’s Top Talent Tracker Q4 2025, which monitors more than 214 million highly skilled workers across 200+ countries with data current to August 31, 2025, recorded approximately 2.4 million cross-border relocations among highly skilled professionals.
That represents a decline of 8.5% year-on-year, roughly 220,000 fewer people on the move than the prior year, and marks the first contraction in global talent mobility since 2020.
The drivers are identifiable. Tighter immigration policies in Canada and the UK reduced inflows to both countries meaningfully, with Canada losing 0.8 percentage points of market share and the UK losing 0.5 points. Weaker hiring conditions in tech and professional services dampened demand-side pull.
Economic uncertainty in several major economies added further friction. None of this signals the end of talent mobility, but it does signal that the conditions enabling easy cross-border movement have become more constrained.
The geographic shift is as important as the volume decline. The United States strengthened its dominant position, now capturing 37% of all inbound highly skilled talent, a gain of 2.4 percentage points year-on-year.
The UAE made the most dramatic move of any destination, rising to second place for STEM talent and attracting approximately 178,000 highly skilled professionals, an increase of 0.8 percentage points in market share. Saudi Arabia followed a similar trajectory. The Gulf states are no longer emerging destinations; they are established competitors in the global talent market.
STEM mobility tracked the overall downward trend, falling 5.2% with approximately 690,000 professionals relocating. AI talent moved in the opposite direction, with BCG recording a sharp rise in tracked AI professionals on the move, though the report notes this partly reflects wider upskilling and an expanded definition of AI skills rather than a straightforward fivefold increase in physical movement.
What it does confirm is that AI capability remains the most sought-after and internationally mobile skill category in the current market.
Survey data from the StepStone Group’s Decoding Global Talent 2024 study, which surveyed 150,735 professionals across 188 countries, found that 23% were actively searching for jobs abroad and a further 21% were open to relocating without yet pursuing it.
Those preferences have not evaporated; the gap between intent and actual movement reflects the friction that tighter policy environments and weaker hiring conditions have introduced.
Australia, the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Germany remained the most cited dream destinations, though actual inflow data from BCG suggests Canada and the UK are losing ground relative to their aspirational ranking.
Changing Models of Mobility
The Volume Picture Has Fundamentally Changed
The question organizations asked five years ago was whether mobility would survive the pandemic. The question now is whether the traditional model of mobility, a long-term assignment, a generous expat package, a family relocation, can survive the cost environment of 2026.
The evidence from Cartus’s Global Talent Mobility Survey 2026, based on 83 respondents across HR, compensation, and global mobility functions, shows a mobility landscape that is neither collapsing nor comfortably growing.
Roughly 35% of organizations reported a volume increase over the past two years, while 34% reported a decrease. The near-even split is itself the story. Mobility is no longer a function where the default direction is expansion. Organizations are making active choices about where to move people, for how long, and at what cost.
The reasons behind volume changes have also shifted materially since 2024. When mobility activity increased, the drivers in 2026 were strategic expansion into new markets and company growth.
When it decreased, cost containment was the leading cause, followed by reduced business appetite for global mobility as a tool. This is a different picture from 2024, when local talent shortages drove increases and cost controls drove decreases.
The 2026 dynamic suggests mobility is being treated more selectively and tied more directly to business growth decisions than to filling gaps.
Cost Pressure Has Moved From Background to Boardroom
Cost pressure is not new, but its position in the agenda has intensified. According to Mercer’s 2025 Strategic Mobility Management Survey, high costs remain the primary barrier to talent relocation.
To address this, organizations are increasingly replacing traditional long-term assignments with shorter, more targeted, and more cost-controlled alternatives. Short-term assignments, virtual assignments, commuter arrangements, and locally hired foreign nationals are all gaining ground as organizations seek to move skills without moving the full cost structure of a classic expatriate package.
Immigration Has Become the Defining Operational Challenge
Immigration has emerged as the defining operational challenge of 2026. In Cartus’s 2024 survey, immigration ranked eleventh among mobility challenges.
In the 2026 survey it has risen to joint top position, tying with rising mobility costs. The countries generating the most immigration difficulty include China, Europe broadly, and the United States.
Local law complexity is flagged most prominently for Brazil, India, and Switzerland. This is a direct reflection of the policy tightening that has reduced actual talent inflows to Canada and the UK as documented in BCG’s movement data. What was an administrative concern two years ago is now a strategic constraint.
Flexibility Is the New Policy Default
Flexibility has become the organising principle of modern mobility program design. Cartus data shows that 48% of organizations have already embraced flexible mobility policies or are actively introducing them, with a further 23% considering it.
The 2026 report identifies flexibility as simultaneously the fourth greatest challenge and the fifth highest priority for mobility leaders, appearing in all three dimensions of the survey: top challenge, top priority, and top driver of policy reviews.
Nearly two thirds of respondents (63%) are planning a policy review in 2026, with employee experience, cost, and flexibility cited as the leading reasons. Organizations are not changing policy as a cosmetic exercise; they are redesigning programs to serve a workforce that now expects negotiated, individualized relocation support rather than a standardised package.
Technology Is Splitting Mobility Teams Into Two Camps
Technology is changing how mobility programs operate. Mercer’s Global Talent Trends 2026, drawing on nearly 12,000 executives, HR leaders, employees, and investors globally, shows that AI and skills-based talent management have moved to the centre of workforce strategy conversations.
Within mobility specifically, Cartus data shows 42% of mobility teams now use AI for efficiency and communication purposes, while 49% have not yet adopted it.
The majority of organizations (68%) favour a hybrid approach, combining human expertise with technology for supporting relocating employees. The gap between AI adopters and non-adopters in mobility will likely widen as administrative complexity grows, particularly around immigration and compliance tracking.
The Measurement Gap Is the Most Urgent Problem Nobody Is Talking About
One metric from the 2026 Cartus survey warrants direct attention from every mobility leader: 41% of organizations do not formally measure assignment success at all.
At a moment when mobility programs are under cost scrutiny, competing for budget alongside AI investment, and being asked to prove strategic value, the absence of any measurement framework in four out of ten organizations is a significant vulnerability.
Mobility teams that cannot demonstrate ROI will find it increasingly difficult to maintain program budgets, let alone expand them.
The Rise of E-Migration
What E-Migration Actually Is
E-migration is not remote work in the conventional sense. It is a structural shift in how global labor markets connect: professionals remaining in their home country while employed by foreign companies, contributing to overseas operations without crossing a border. The physical move has been removed. The economic relationship has not.
The scale of this shift is now measurable. According to WEF analysis published January 2025, over 2.2 million remote workers from Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico were contributing to global companies in 2023. From 2020 to 2023, the number of South American professionals working remotely for North American companies grew by 70%.
That growth rate, sustained over three years, is not a pandemic anomaly. It is a structural realignment of where technical work gets done.
Why Companies Are Choosing E-Migration
The economics are direct. A US data scientist earning $156,000 can be replaced by equivalent talent in Latin America for between $24,000 and $36,000, according to market analysis from Career Launch Campus. In software engineering, the differential is similar.
When savings reach 50 to 90% with comparable output quality, finance leaders act on it. Roughly 70% of US tech firms now actively hire from Latin America to capture those savings while maintaining workable time zone overlap.
The WEF analysis adds a dimension that matters for HR teams beyond pure cost. A Deel survey cited by WEF found that software engineers in developing countries earn 28% more when working for international companies compared to domestic employers.
E-migration is not exploitative arbitrage in the way critics sometimes frame it. For both parties, the arrangement creates value that neither could access in a purely local market.
Latin American governments recognized this early. Mexico’s National Digital Strategy and Brazil’s Digital Transformation Strategy were both designed to support and expand the digital professional base capable of serving international employers.
The result has been a growing ecosystem of technically skilled professionals who can collaborate effectively with US and European teams without the logistical and compliance costs of physical relocation.
The Compliance Reality Nobody Prepared For
The opportunity is real. The compliance exposure that comes with it is equally real, and most organizations are not adequately prepared for it.
The most significant regulatory development affecting e-migration in 2026 is the OECD’s November 2025 update to the Model Tax Convention, the first major revision since 2017. The update introduces a two-part framework for assessing permanent establishment risk from cross-border remote work.
The temporal test establishes a 50% working time safe harbor: if an employee spends less than 50% of their total working time at a foreign remote location over any 12-month period, that location is generally not classified as a fixed place of business, and no permanent establishment arises.
The commercial reason test then applies when the 50% threshold is exceeded, examining whether the foreign presence serves a genuine business purpose.
This is meaningful guidance, but it does not eliminate risk. It provides a clearer framework for managing it. The OECD update requires organizations to actively track where employees are working, document time splits across jurisdictions, and update employment contracts and work-from-anywhere policies accordingly.
For most organizations, that infrastructure does not currently exist. According to TaxRavens 2026 analysis, 60% of global mobility compliance failures in 2026 stem from evolving tax and immigration enforcement errors, a figure that reflects how quickly the regulatory environment has moved relative to organizational readiness.
Why EOR Solves Some Problems But Not All
Employer of Record solutions are the most commonly cited response to e-migration compliance complexity. An EOR becomes the legal employer in the foreign country, handling payroll, tax withholding, statutory contributions, and employment law compliance.
This eliminates misclassification risk and addresses payroll obligations. It does not automatically eliminate permanent establishment risk.
As Ogletree Deakins noted in February 2026, if an employee’s activities in a country constitute a fixed place of business or a dependent agent relationship because they sign contracts, serve local clients, or maintain a home office used predominantly for the employer’s business, corporate tax exposure can remain even with an EOR in place.
EOR manages the employment layer. Permanent establishment is a corporate tax question. Both need active management, and conflating the two is one of the most common and costly mistakes organizations make when building e-migration programs.
What Organizations Need to Do Differently
Most e-migration programs don’t fail on intent. They fail on infrastructure. Organizations approve cross-border remote work without the systems, contracts, or internal coordination needed to manage the risks.
Recent guidance highlights a few non-negotiables. Companies need reliable jurisdiction tracking, ideally integrated with payroll. Work-from-anywhere policies and employment contracts should reflect the OECD 50% threshold.
Tax, HR, and legal teams need to coordinate early, especially for treaty and social security obligations. And in higher-risk cases, EOR models or entity setup may be required to reduce permanent establishment exposure.
These aren’t best practices anymore. They’re baseline requirements for managing international remote work at scale.
At the same time, the pressure to get this right is increasing. Around 72% of employers still report difficulty filling roles, a figure that has nearly doubled over the past two decades. What’s changed is where the gap sits. AI-related skills now lead global shortages, overtaking traditional IT and engineering roles.
The implication is straightforward. The skills companies need most are often not available locally. That’s what’s pushing organizations toward cross-border hiring and e-migration in the first place.
Geography Creates Radically Different Hiring Realities
The global average masks sharp differences across countries. Slovakia reports an 87% shortage rate, followed by Greece and Japan at 84%, Germany at 83%, and both Portugal and India at 82%. At the other end, China stands at 48%, Poland at 57%, and Finland at 60%.
These differences have direct implications. Hiring conditions vary dramatically depending on location. The same role, budget, and timeline can lead to entirely different outcomes across markets.
That’s why mobility strategy can’t rely on global averages. It has to reflect local labor conditions.
The United States, at 69%, sits just below the global average. Despite being a major destination for global talent, it still faces significant domestic shortages. Inflows help, but they don’t resolve the underlying imbalance.
AI Skills Are Driving Cross-Border Hiring
The rise of AI as the most difficult skill category changes how companies approach hiring.
If the most critical capabilities are scarce locally and concentrated in specific regions, then international sourcing becomes central to hiring strategy.
BCG data shows that AI specialists relocate more frequently than other high-skill professionals. At the same time, ManpowerGroup’s data confirms those skills are the hardest to find within local markets.
Taken together, the implication is straightforward. Treating AI hiring as a local problem is no longer realistic.
Employer Response Reflects the Pressure
Companies are not standing still. According to ManpowerGroup, 27% of employers are prioritizing upskilling and reskilling. Another 20% are offering greater flexibility in where and how people work, while 19% are increasing compensation.
In total, 91% of employers are actively trying to address talent shortages in some form.
These efforts matter, but they don’t fully solve the problem when the underlying skills are limited in the local workforce.
Scale and Sector Intensify the Challenge
Larger organizations face even greater difficulty. Companies with 1,000 to 4,999 employees report the highest shortage levels at 75%, significantly above smaller firms.
These organizations tend to have more specialized roles and more complex requirements, which makes local hiring harder. They are also the ones most likely to invest in global mobility and cross-border hiring. The data suggests that even with those capabilities, the gap remains.
Industry patterns show a similar trend. The Information sector reports a 75% shortage rate, followed by Hospitality and Public Sector/Health/Social Services at 74%. Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services come in at 73%, Manufacturing at 72%, and Finance and Insurance at 71%.
These are core sectors of modern economies. Persistent shortages here are not a temporary issue; they are a structural constraint.
Strategic Outcomes and Business Impact
Mobility Is Still Being Managed as Logistics, Not Strategy
The case for treating mobility as a strategic function is well established. The data is clear. But in practice, most organizations still run mobility as an operational process rather than a talent lever.
That gap shows up clearly in research from EY’s Mobility Reimagined Survey and KPMG’s 2025 Global Mobility Benchmarking Report.
EY finds that 48% of employers are struggling to source global talent, and three-quarters say filling senior roles takes more than a year. Mobility is positioned alongside GenAI and upskilling as one of the primary responses to long-term talent shortages.
Yet 62% of respondents in the KPMG report say their mobility function is not involved in advising on candidate selection for global assignments. If mobility teams are not part of those decisions, it’s difficult to treat them as part of talent strategy.
Evolved Mobility Functions Produce Different Outcomes
EY draws a clear line between mobility functions that are simply operational and those that have evolved. The difference comes down to five areas: strategic alignment, integration with talent strategy, digital capability, flexibility, and use of external expertise.
The outcomes are not marginal.
Evolved functions are 3.7 times more likely to say mobility helps address medium-term talent shortages. They are also more likely to link mobility directly to business growth and to expand the scope of their programs over time.
What stands out is how they measure performance. These teams track metrics that others often ignore, performance ratings of returning employees (68%), revenue impact (63%), promotion rates after assignments (59%), and time to fill roles (53%).
Without this level of measurement, it becomes difficult to build a credible internal case for investment. That helps explain why 41% of organizations in Cartus’ 2026 data report measuring nothing at all.
The Business Case Is Stronger Than Most Organizations Realize
The financial impact of global talent is more concrete than many organizations assume.
BCG’s Top Talent Tracker Q2 2025 shows that companies attracting more globally mobile talent into leadership roles generate roughly one percentage point higher shareholder value per year. That translates to significantly higher long-term value compared to less globally diverse leadership teams.
This isn’t a soft argument about engagement or culture. It’s a measurable financial outcome tied directly to talent composition.
At the individual level, the impact is just as clear. EY reports that 85% of employees with mobility experience describe it as transformative, and 48% say it increases their likelihood of staying with the company.
For organizations running mobility programs at scale, even modest improvements in retention translate into meaningful financial returns, assuming the data is tracked properly.
ROI Is Now the Central Challenge
KPMG’s 2025 data shows a shift in what mobility leaders are focused on.
In 2024, cost management was the top concern, cited by 39% of respondents. By 2025, that dropped to 18%. In its place, demonstrating ROI has become the primary challenge, cited by 31%.
This shift changes how mobility is discussed internally. Cost conversations keep the function operational. ROI conversations bring it into talent strategy and financial planning.
Mobility leaders also expect the perceived strategic value of their programs to rise from 6.0 to 7.1 out of 10 over the next 12 to 18 months, a meaningful shift if it materializes.
GenAI Could Close the Analytics Gap
For many organizations, the main barrier is not intent but capability. Mobility teams often lack the data infrastructure and analytical tools needed to demonstrate impact.
According to EY, GenAI adoption among mobility professionals has grown from 22% to 35% year-on-year, and 70% expect it to have a positive impact. Common use cases include workforce planning, productivity analysis, and risk management.
But GenAI is not a shortcut. Its value depends on the quality of underlying data and the ability to interpret outputs in a business context.
Organizations that invest in data foundations first, and then apply automation, are far more likely to close the analytics gap that has held mobility back from being treated as a strategic function.
The Broader Economic and Human Context
Remittances: The Financial Backbone of Global Migration
Remittances are central to the economics of migration. They have been the largest source of external financing for low- and middle-income countries since 2015, consistently exceeding foreign direct investment.
In 2024, global remittance flows reached $905 billion, up from $865 billion the year before, according to World Bank estimates cited in Visa’s 2025 Digital Remittances Adoption Report. Of that, $685 billion went to low- and middle-income countries, more than FDI and official development assistance combined.
The largest recipients were India ($129 billion), Mexico ($68 billion), China ($48 billion), the Philippines ($40 billion), and Pakistan ($33 billion). These flows support household consumption, education, healthcare, and small business activity in regions where formal economic systems often fall short. Globally, around one billion people rely on remittance services each year.
For HR and mobility teams, this matters more than it might seem. The people driving cross-border hiring and e-migration strategies are often part of these same financial networks. Hiring internationally doesn’t just shift where work gets done; it redistributes income across borders, often supporting entire households in the process.
A New Variable: The US Remittance Tax
The policy environment around remittances is also evolving. The United States introduced a 1% tax on remittance transfers, effective January 1, 2026, applying to all senders regardless of immigration status.
According to UN DESA estimates, this could reduce remittance flows from the US by around 1.6%. The impact is uneven. In absolute terms, India and Mexico are most affected. In relative terms, smaller and more remittance-dependent economies, including El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, and Jamaica — face greater exposure.
For companies building nearshoring or e-migration strategies, especially in Latin America, these shifts are not just macroeconomic signals. They shape the financial realities of the workforce they depend on.
Migration Is Costing Lives at a Record Rate
The human cost of migration remains significant. According to IOM data, 2024 was the deadliest year on record, with at least 8,938 deaths along migration routes worldwide. That exceeds the previous high in 2023 and continues a trend that has persisted for more than a decade.
Since 2014, over 72,000 deaths and disappearances have been recorded globally. Many more likely go unreported.
A large share of these incidents occur in regions affected by conflict, including Libya, Yemen, and Sudan. The data underscores the risks associated with irregular migration and the importance of safe, regulated pathways.
For organizations involved in global hiring and mobility, this context matters. Decisions around sourcing, immigration policy engagement, and program design sit within a broader system where access to legal and structured migration routes has real human consequences.
How Countries Are Competing for Talent
Recent rankings offer a clearer view of how countries are positioning themselves in the global talent market.
The INSEAD Global Talent Competitiveness Index 2025, covering 135 countries, places Singapore at the top for the first time, followed by Switzerland, Denmark, Finland, and Sweden. European economies account for 18 of the top 25 positions. The United States ranks ninth, its lowest position in over a decade, reflecting reduced openness to international talent and weaker performance in lifelong learning.
The UAE stands out on a different dimension. While not leading overall, it ranks third globally in the “Attract” pillar, highlighting its policy-led approach to drawing international talent. More broadly, countries across the Gulf are strengthening their position as talent destinations.
The OECD Indicators of Talent Attractiveness (second edition, 2025) add a policy-focused lens, evaluating countries based on income conditions, quality of life, family environment, and healthcare systems. The latest update also introduces a dedicated ranking for startup founders.
Together, these frameworks offer a practical view for HR and location strategy teams. The GTCI reflects overall talent competitiveness, while the OECD indicators isolate the policy and lifestyle factors that influence where people choose to move.
Practical Takeaways for HR and Mobility Leaders
Stop Treating Immigration as an Administrative Function
Immigration has moved from a secondary concern to one of the top mobility challenges in a single survey cycle. This isn’t incremental change, it reflects tightening policies across major destination markets, including the US, Canada, the UK, and parts of the EU.
Handling immigration reactively is no longer viable. It needs to be part of planning before any deployment decision is made.
As Lewis Silkin’s March 2026 analysis notes, organizations that integrate mobility into strategic decision-making early are better positioned to secure talent and manage risk. In practice, that means aligning legal, HR, tax, and commercial teams before approving a move, not during onboarding.
Build Day-Count Tracking Before You Need It
The OECD’s November 2025 update introduced a 50% working-time safe harbor for permanent establishment risk. The guidance is useful, but only if organizations know where their employees are working.
Most don’t.
With the EU’s Entry/Exit System and increased data sharing between governments, visibility into employee movement is improving on the regulatory side. Organizations should assume that authorities already have this data.
The priority is straightforward: track it internally. That means moving toward automated, real-time tracking integrated with payroll systems. This applies not just to formal assignees, but also business travelers and remote cross-border workers.
Segment Policy by Move Type
The single expatriate policy is no longer sufficient for most organizations.
Cartus 2026 data shows that nearly half of companies are adopting more flexible policies, and the majority are reviewing them this year. The challenge is that many treat flexibility as an adjustment to allowances rather than a structural redesign.
Effective policy design now requires clear segmentation. Long-term assignments, short-term assignments, virtual roles, commuter setups, e-migration, and business travel each come with different compliance and cost implications.
Organizations that treat them as distinct categories — with defined ownership and cost models, are better positioned to control both risk and spend.
Measure What Actually Drives Value
KPMG’s data shows that demonstrating ROI is now the top challenge for mobility leaders. At the same time, Cartus reports that 41% of organizations measure nothing at all.
That gap is critical.
Cost per move is already tracked. What’s missing are metrics that connect mobility to business outcomes, retention after assignments, promotion rates, time-to-fill for critical roles, and revenue impact in growth markets.
Organizations that track these consistently are in a stronger position to defend and expand their mobility programs. Without that data, the conversation remains focused on cost.
Treat E-Migration as a Core Hiring Strategy
E-migration is no longer a workaround. In Latin America alone, more than 2.2 million professionals were working for foreign employers without relocating in 2023, and the number continues to grow.
For organizations facing shortages in areas like AI, where local supply remains limited, this model is increasingly central to hiring strategy.
But scaling it requires infrastructure. Employer of Record setups, jurisdiction tracking, compliant contracts, and coordination between HR, tax, and legal are essential. Without these, the compliance risk can outweigh the cost advantages.
Get Mobility Into Talent Decision-Making
KPMG data shows that 62% of mobility teams are not involved in candidate selection for global assignments.
That limits their role by definition.
Mobility doesn’t need a new reporting line to become strategic, but it does need a seat in talent reviews, workforce planning, and leadership pipeline discussions. That requires speaking in terms of outcomes, not processes.
The data supports that shift — whether it’s BCG’s shareholder value impact, EY’s performance gaps between evolved and non-evolved functions, or the global shortage of AI skills. These are strategic inputs, not operational details.
Build for the Market That Exists Now
Talent flows are shifting.
BCG’s 2025 data shows the first decline in global mobility since 2020. The US and UAE are gaining share, while Canada and the UK are losing ground. Singapore now leads the GTCI rankings. AI skills have become the most constrained globally.
Mobility strategies built on past patterns are already out of date.
Access to talent now depends on broader sourcing geographies and more flexible operating models. Organizations that adjust to where talent is actually moving, not where it used to move, will have a clear advantage.
