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Canada is now considered the most desirable destination for foreign workers when it comes to choosing a country to move to. This is what a global poll shows, pushing the US out of the top.
This is the result of a survey of 209,000 people in 190 countries, which wanted to find out whether and under what circumstances the respondents would move to a foreign country to work.
The survey was conducted between October and December 2020 by the management consultancy Boston Consulting Group and the global recruitment alliance The Network. It was part of a report released on Thursday entitled “Decoding Global Talent, Onsite and Virtual”. This was the third study of global workforce trends conducted by BCG and The Network since 2014.
The report’s authors said the US was “hurt by an inconsistent pandemic response, adoption of more nationalist policies and social unrest”.
Meanwhile, they said Canada and Australia, just behind the US as the third most desirable country for relocation, both did “a far better job of managing pandemics”.
“They also have better social systems and more open cultures than the US,” added the authors.
The fact that Singapore and New Zealand rose to the top 10 rankings of the most desirable countries for worker relocation reflected how countries in the Asia-Pacific region had also better contained the coronavirus, the report said.
In terms of cities, the UK’s capital, London, remained the world’s most sought-after place to work, followed by the Dutch capital, Amsterdam.
“The fame and reach of the British Commonwealth gives London an aura that helps it overcome geopolitical uncertainties, such as those surrounding Brexit that have haunted the UK as a whole over the past few years,” the report’s authors say.
Overall, the number of workers who agreed to move to another country for work had fallen from 63% to around 50% since the first survey in 2014. The report attributed this trend in part to global travel restrictions and the shift in mass work to remote work, which allowed people to work for a company overseas without having to move.
Top countries for relocating workers
- Canada
- US
- Australia
- Germany
- United Kingdom
- Japan
- Switzerland
- Singapore
- France
- New Zealand
Top cities for relocating workers
- London, UK
- Amsterdam, Netherlands
- Dubai, United Arab Emirates
- Berlin, Germany
- Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
- Tokyo, Japan
- Singapore
- New York, USA
- Barcelona, Spain
- Sydney, Australia
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