In recent years, the problem of brain drain has become a subject of great debate in Kazakhstan. The country has experienced a trend of negative external migration over the past decade.
According to the Bureau of National Statistics, as reported by Tengri News, 12,732 people left Kazakhstan in 2023. Although the reporting does not specify, presumably these are people who have decided to leave Kazakhstan for opportunities elsewhere, as opposed to those engaged in seasonal labor migration or leisure travel. Of the migrants reported in 2023, 9,948 of them left for Commonwealth of Independent State (CIS) countries, while the remaining 2,784 left for countries beyond the former Soviet Union.
In the January-March 2024 period, the number of people leaving the country was 3,785. Compared with the same period in 2023, the number of people leaving Kazakhstan increased by 42.1 percent.
More detailed information from the Bureau of National Statistics and the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection would be necessary to analyze future trends in economic development and to what extent these departures qualitatively affect society.
The term “brain drain” was first used in a report of the British Royal Society in 1962 regarding the emigration of scientists, engineers, and technicians from the U.K. to the U.S. It has been used to refer to the mass emigration of highly qualified specialists from developing countries to the developed world.
Returning to the 2023 figures cites above, almost every fourth person who left Kazakhstan had higher education, and every sixth person had secondary education. Most who left had a technical (2,809), economic (1,456), pedagogical (75), or legal (421) background. That is, they are people exactly in those specialties that Kazakhstan lacks.
Kazakhstan’s labor market is experiencing a significant increase in demand since the beginning of 2024. Employers are actively looking for workers in various fields, as is reflected in the number of vacancies posted on popular job search resources. According to the press service of HeadHunter Kazakhstan, more than 40,000 vacancies were posted in the first two weeks of January, twice as many as in the previous month. Overall, there is a high demand for various specialists in the Kazakhstan labor market, including auditors, lawyers, recruiters, purchasers, doctors, and teachers. Employers are willing to offer high wages to qualified specialists, especially in areas where there is an acute shortage of personnel.
Moreover, the statistics cited above regarding those who left Kazakhstan in 2023 do not include the several tens of thousands of Kazakhstanis who live abroad for study or work. They may not be counted as leaving, but many probably have no plans to return home.
Education in particular exerts a strong gravitational force on Kazakhstanis, drawing them away from the country. According to updated data from the UNESCO Statistical Institute, Kazakhstan sits in ninth place in the world in the number of students abroad (91,200 students).
The key incentives for Kazakhstani youth to go abroad to study are the perceived higher quality and prestige of foreign educational institutions, and, for some, ambition to secure employment and residence abroad. Not all those who travel abroad for education return to Kazakhstan, contributing to the “brain drain.”
In addition, every second Kazakhstani citizen who leaves is married, so families are leaving as well.
Apart from the pull factors enticing Kazakhstanis to leave, such as economic opportunities, including better jobs, and higher standards of living, ecology also plays crucial role in pushing people to leave Kazakhstan. While low wages are often referenced as a critical factor contributing to the “brain drain” every year, more and more people are moving due to unfavorable environmental conditions. For example, in a ranking of the world’s most polluted cities in terms of annual average PM2.5 concentration in the 2017-2023 period by IQAir, Kazakhstan’s Karaganda ranked at 44th out of more than 7,000 cities in the ranking.
The facts show that Kazakhstan is indeed facing a brain drain. The state can work to counter this trend in several ways.
First, the state must provide young people with decent education, work opportunities, and sufficient wages. The most important asset of any country is its people. The outflow of youth and educated people causes damage to Kazakhstan in the tens, hundreds, and millions of dollars – retaining Kazakhstanis in the country needs to be a priority.
Second, the state needs to foster comfortable working conditions for specialists and afford opportunities for professional growth.
Third, to retain young families in the country, there needs to be an available supply of affordable housing.
Finally, the government and business leaders need to recognize environmental conditions as vitally important and commit to improving air quality. As Kazakhstan works on its energy transition, with the stated goal to become carbon neutral by 2060, the introduction of advanced technologies will be critical.
All of these steps are realistic and economically possible. In some areas, Kazakhstan has already begun this important work. Kazakhstani leaders understand the problem, but efforts to date have not achieved significant success.
In his 2022 State of the Nation Address, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev emphasized the development of technical and vocational education in the country, and issued a call for the involvement of large companies in this process within the framework of social responsibility.
In Kazakhstan, as in many other countries, the level of wages varies significantly depending on different fields and experience of the employees. Today companies in technical sectors (electric power industry, mechanical engineering and metalworking, the fuel, automotive, and space industries) are willing to pay the highest salaries to retain their employees. The Ministry of Labor and Social Protection reported that as of 2023, the highest salaries were received by workers in the mining industry (an average of 692,000 tenge), financial services (494,000 tenge), and information and communications (447,000 tenge).
There is hope that the “brain drain” trend may gradually change. Today, many international companies are moving from Russia to Kazakhstan, which implies the creation of jobs and demand for a workforce with appropriate qualifications.
Can Kazakhstan finally solve its brain drain problem? It’s hard to be sure. Young people are hardly inclined to analyze the differences between declared development programs, they are more likely to proceed from quite real and prosaic indicators: the standard of living and leisure, opportunities for self-realization with the education they receive, and opportunities to buy housing and maintain a family. In addition, it is necessary to understand that today the demands of the population and, first of all, young people also include accountability and transparency of the authorities, and a political arena that takes into account the views of every citizen. The development of digital technologies also provides people with access to the world, broadening their understanding of what is possible to achieve and the many possible places to live a good life.
Migration flows, the movement of populations, are a normal phenomenon. Almost all countries are involved in migration exchange in some fashion. And the outflow of well-educated and young Kazakhstanis depends on many factors. The number of people leaving the country is increasing, as stated above, but it is unknown whether that trend will continue into the future. One thing is clear, however: Kazakhstan’s government needs to continue working to ensure a comfortable life for all Kazakhstanis.