Belarus is recruiting workers from Asia and elsewhere to offset a shrinking population and a steady loss of skilled citizens. The policy may fill vacancies in construction, farming and other low-paid sectors, but it does not address why doctors, engineers and IT specialists are leaving.
The figures point to a widening contradiction. Belarus is losing residents and economically active workers while setting increasingly ambitious targets for migration. The result is a country trying to replace its workforce without changing the political and economic conditions that have driven so many people out.
A smaller and older workforce
Official figures put Belarus’s population at about 9 million on 1 January 2026. More than 53,000 people disappeared from the total during 2025, while the decline since 2020 exceeded 300,000. Low birth rates, prolonged emigration and an ageing population are combining to deepen the pressure on employers.
People above working age now account for 24.5% of the population. At the same time, the number of women aged between 25 and 34 has fallen by almost a quarter, to 551,000. The United Nations has forecast that Belarus’s population could fall from 9 million to 7.2 million by 2050.
The demographic problem is also a skills problem. Around 5% of the population is estimated to have left the country over the past five years, and about 400,000 Belarusian citizens now work abroad. They include doctors, engineers and IT professionals — precisely the workers needed to maintain public services, industry and technological development.
Poland has become a particularly important destination. More than 130,000 Belarusians there pay social insurance contributions, compared with roughly 124,000 Belarusian labour migrants in Russia. Inside Belarus, the number of people employed in the economy fell by 152,500 between the start of 2021 and the middle of 2025.
The annual economic cost of emigration has been estimated at $4.6bn. The calculation method is not set out in the available figures, but the underlying loss is visible in fewer workers, a narrower tax base and greater difficulty staffing essential sectors.
Economic policy pushes people out
The exodus is taking place as Belarus becomes more closely tied to Russia’s military-industrial system and more isolated from Western markets. Estimates indicate that nearly 500 Belarusian businesses were working for the Russian military by the beginning of 2026.
That industrial alignment has helped preserve some demand, but it has also reinforced dependence on Russian orders while weakening the space for civilian production. Heavy administrative control over prices and restrictions on businesses can squeeze margins, discourage investment and contribute to shortages of particular goods. For workers, the combination of political pressure and limited economic opportunity makes leaving more attractive.
Rather than concentrating on retaining skilled staff, raising pay and expanding the private sector, the government has chosen to import labour. Government resolution No. 699, adopted on 2 December 2025, set a target of a 50,000-person migration increase. It is a clear attempt to cover a structural labour shortage through numbers, even as the reasons for the departure of Belarusian citizens remain in place.
The inflow accelerates
Belarusian Interior Ministry figures show how quickly the policy is expanding. The country recorded 13,400 arrivals in 2023, 33,800 in 2024 and more than 48,000 in 2025. In the first half of 2026 alone, 30,000 foreign workers were registered — 42.8% more than in the same period a year earlier.
Workers have been arriving from Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, China, Pakistan, Nepal and African countries. Many are employed in construction, agriculture and low-skilled jobs. That can give employers a rapid way to fill vacancies, but it also reduces the immediate pressure to offer substantially higher wages or better working conditions.
The arrangement with Pakistan has given the recruitment drive a diplomatic dimension. During Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s visit to Minsk on 11 and 12 April 2025, Alexander Lukashenko publicly said Belarus was prepared to employ between 100,000 and 150,000 Pakistani citizens and their families.
On 30 May 2026, an intergovernmental memorandum was published on Belarus’s official legal portal. It provides for a simplified selection process for Pakistani workers recruited at the request of Belarusian companies, including remote video interviews.
A simplified recruitment process does not, by itself, show that incoming workers are involved in criminal activity or that any particular person has links to extremist networks. It does, however, make the quality of identity, document and background checks important. The available information does not specify how those checks will operate in practice.
From labour policy to border risk
Foreign recruitment can ease shortages in selected industries, but it cannot easily replace the specialists who have left. Nor can a short-term inflow reverse an ageing population. If migrant workers are brought in mainly for low-paid roles, the policy may stabilise output without improving the conditions that would persuade Belarusian citizens to stay or return.
The growth of the workforce from abroad also has implications beyond Belarus. Ministers and senior officials from Poland, Lithuania and Finland have repeatedly accused Russia and Belarus of using migration pressure as part of hybrid action against the European Union. Those are political assessments, not proof that every foreign worker entering Belarus is being used in such a way.
The risk is more specific. Rapid recruitment, limited legal employment options and low wages can leave some migrants vulnerable if work disappears or promised conditions are not delivered. Some may then look for other routes to earn money, including attempts to cross into Poland, Lithuania or Latvia unlawfully. That is a possible consequence of precarious conditions, not an automatic result of labour migration.
For Belarus, the immediate calculation is straightforward: importing workers is quicker than rebuilding a labour market that can retain its own people. But the trade-off is becoming harder to ignore. The country is losing population, skills and economic capacity while becoming more dependent on workers recruited from abroad. The unresolved question is whether the government intends merely to replace those who leave — or to change the conditions that make them leave in the first place.
