According to the recent OECD report, people are emigrating from Serbia at a galloping rate. Out of 50 countries covered by the report, Serbia occupies 31st place in terms of countries with the highest emigration rate.
There is no precise data about how many Serbian citizens currently live and work abroad, or how many people emigrate from Serbia every year in search of jobs, but, according to the official statistical data in Serbia (based on the 2011), there are 313,411 Serbian citizens living abroad.
However, the data collated by the OECD, which is based on the data compiled by the countries that take in economic migrants, shows that there are 598,200 Serbian citizens (ages 15 and over) living abroad. According to OECD, the average number of Serbian citizens that left the country each year in the period from 2005 to 2014 to live in OECD countries was 31,000. In 2014, a total of 57,000 people emigrated from Serbia, while, in 2015, this number reached a record-breaking 60,000.
Nobody knows how many of those migrants came back to Serbia. According to Professor Vladimir Grecic, a regular member of the Academy of Economic Sciences, a recent survey has shown that many young people were also planning to leave Serbia, i.e. 2/3 of those surveyed said that they would emigrate.
The main reason for migration is entirely of economic nature (81.9% of those surveyed said this). They want higher living standard, finding jobs quicker, better conditions for launching their own businesses, better education and similar.
The most attractive countries to migrate to are the EU countries (a quarter of the surveyed people would move there), especially Germany and Austria, followed by the US and Canada.
(021.rs, 30.10.2017)
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