Bangladesh migration costs
Data > Bangladesh migration costs
What Bangladeshi workers actually paid to go abroad for work, compared with the legal caps the government sets on migration costs, for six destinations, from the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics' Cost of Migration Survey 2020 and the caps for 16 destinations, with a calculator that shows how long one worker takes to earn the cost back.
Download the dataset (92 KB, zip, from Zenodo) · Code and documentation
| Source | Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, Cost of Migration Survey 2020; government cost caps as reported in the news |
|---|---|
| Covers | Workers who left Bangladesh in 2015 to 2018; caps set in 2017, and Malaysia in 2022 |
| Size | Four small tables: costs for six destinations, borrowing by sex, caps for 16 destinations, and cost against cap |
| Format | CSV tables, with a documentation file, the code that builds and checks them, and the calculator |
| Version | 1.0.0, published 29 October 2026 |
| Licence | Data: CC BY 4.0. Code: MIT. Source documents keep their own terms. |
| DOI | 10.5281/zenodo.23752072 (all versions) · 10.5281/zenodo.23752073 (this version) |
What it is
Bangladesh sets a legal maximum on what a worker may be charged to migrate for a job abroad. This dataset sets what workers actually paid, from the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics' Cost of Migration Survey 2020, against those caps, by destination.
Workers who left between 2015 and 2018 paid 2 to 4 times the cap on average, depending on the destination. Across all destinations the average worker paid Tk 416,789, equal to 17.6 months of income, and 77.6 percent borrowed money to go.
The True Cost Calculator lets one worker enter what they paid, what they borrowed and at what interest, and their expected wage, and shows how many months of work it takes to earn the cost back. Nothing typed into it is saved or sent anywhere. Open the calculator.
What it cannot be used to say
- The caps come from news reports. The government notices setting them could not be found online, so every cap is marked as reported in the news. Caps may have changed since; Malaysia's was reset in 2022.
- Timing does not match exactly. Survey workers left in 2015 to 2018, while the caps used were revised in late 2017, so some workers left under earlier caps that could not be found.
- These are averages, not individuals. The survey reports averages only. For Saudi Arabia, extra months are calculated with the average income of all workers there, because the survey does not report income by sex for each country.
- The survey counts every cost a worker paid to get the job and reach it; the caps set the maximum a worker may be charged. Both cover the full cost of migrating, but they were not written to match exactly.
- The survey report itself gives two different overall averages (Tk 408,951 in its text, Tk 416,789 in its tables). The table figure is used.
How it was checked
- The survey report is a scanned document. Each table was read three ways, by text recognition at two resolutions and by eye from the page image, and all three agreed.
- Every survey number was re-checked against the report's own arithmetic: months to recover equal cost divided by income, men's and women's figures add up to the totals, and percentages match the counts.
- The calculator is checked against hand-worked examples and the standard loan formula.
What is in the file
Files
| File | What it holds |
|---|---|
data/clean/survey_cost_by_destination.csv | Average cost (men, women, all), average monthly income and months of income needed to recover the cost, for the six destinations the survey reports separately (survey Tables 5.5 and 9.5) |
data/clean/survey_borrowing_by_sex.csv | How many workers borrowed to migrate, by sex (Table 5.9) |
data/clean/fee_caps.csv | The government's maximum migration cost for 16 destinations, with the source of every figure, including Malaysia's 2017 and 2022 caps |
data/clean/cap_vs_paid.csv | What workers paid compared with the cap, by destination |
Columns
| Column | In file |
|---|---|
destination, mean_cost_male_tk, mean_cost_female_tk, mean_cost_all_tk, mean_monthly_income_tk, months_of_income_to_recover, source_tables | survey_cost_by_destination.csv |
borrowed_to_migrate, workers_male, workers_female, workers_all, percent_male, percent_female, percent_all, source_table | survey_borrowing_by_sex.csv |
destination, cap_tk, applies_to, year_set, reported_by, report_date, report_url, current, status, note | fee_caps.csv |
group, average_paid_tk, cap_2017_tk, paid_above_cap_tk, times_the_cap, extra_months_of_income | cap_vs_paid.csv |
Main finding
| Destination | Average paid | 2017 cap | Times the cap | Extra months of income |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Saudi Arabia (men) | Tk 547,984 | Tk 165,000 | 3.3 | 17.3 |
| Saudi Arabia (women) | Tk 76,995 | Tk 0 | — | 3.5 |
| Oman | Tk 308,047 | Tk 100,780 | 3.1 | 10.8 |
| Malaysia | Tk 404,448 | Tk 160,000 | 2.5 | 10.2 |
| Qatar | Tk 402,478 | Tk 100,780 | 4.0 | 13.5 |
| Singapore | Tk 574,241 | Tk 262,270 | 2.2 | 8.2 |
Cite
Azom, Kazi Affnann (2026). migration-cost-explorer (Version v1.0.0) [Software]. Mercenomics. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23752073
The DOI above is for version 1.0.0. To always point to the latest version, use 10.5281/zenodo.23752072. Found an error? Report it on the Corrections page.