What happens when the people looking for work and the employers looking for talent are in different countries? Imagine two labour markets. In one, a young person has the qualifications, the skills and the ambition to work, but is struggling to find the right opportunity. Somewhere else, an employer has a job that needs filling, but cannot find enough people with the skills to do it. It sounds like the kind of problem that should have a fairly straightforward solution. Yet, across the world, these two realities are increasingly happening at the same time.
Published on 17th September 2026
Labour markets are becoming more out of balance. Some countries continue to experience high unemployment and large pools of available talent, while others are dealing with persistent labour and skills shortages. Ageing populations, declining workforce participation and changing demand are adding to the pressure, particularly in sectors such as healthcare, care, construction and parts of the digital economy. The result is a growing gap between where people are and where the jobs are.
This raises an important question: could international talent mobility help connect the two? For WEC, the answer is increasingly yes, but only if we get the system around it right.
International talent mobility is not simply about moving people from one country to another. It is about matching workers to jobs based on their skills and competencies, while creating pathways that work for workers, employers and the countries involved. And there are already examples showing what this can look like in practice.
Take Egypt. Of the 11.1 million Egyptians working abroad, 62%, 7.1 million people, stay within the Arab region. Rather than treating that as pure loss, Egypt’s New Labor Law, in force since September 2025, has modernised worker protections and introduced flexible and part-time arrangements for the first time, while the private-sector minimum wage rose to 7,000 EGP to strengthen domestic retention. The EU–Egypt THAMM Plus programme, run with the ILO and EU, is now building regular migration pathways to Germany, Italy and other European countries.
Or look at Luxembourg, where nearly three-quarters of the workforce has an international background. There, the government has worked with private employment services to support international talent through information, training, language courses, upskilling and integration programmes.
Europe is also exploring how to make those pathways work at a larger scale. The EU Talent Pool, formally adopted in early 2026, aims to connect employers with jobseekers from outside the EU and improve international recruitment and job matching. Private employment agencies are recognised as potential partners, helping identify talent, match skills with labour market needs and support legal and transparent routes into employment.
Of course, this is not without challenges. International recruitment needs strong safeguards. Workers need protection, qualifications need to be recognised, immigration processes need to work, and recruitment needs to be transparent and fair. Without the right systems in place, mobility can create risks rather than opportunities. With them, it can help address genuine labour shortages while opening doors for people whose skills may be needed elsewhere.
Read WEC’s Social Impact Report 2026: Borderless Talent to explore the global trends, real-world examples and practical approaches shaping the future of international talent mobility.
