Never in the past had the unemployment problem been as severe in Nepal as it happens to be after the outbreak of COVID-19, which infected 250,916 people and caused the death of 1,743 people as of 17 December. In the absence of jobs at home, quite a sizeable chunk of the total population has been leaving the country for foreign destinations, including India, the Middle East, Malaysia, South Korea and Japan. This has created a huge shortage of labour in the agricultural, industrial, construction, tourism, business and trade sectors affecting the growth of the country.
However, the exact figure of people migrating to a foreign land for jobs, especially through the informal channels, is not known. Of Nepal’s total population of nearly 30 million, 3.5 to 8 million of the Nepalese, particularly from the hills are working in India while about 6 million of the Nepalese migrant workers are engaged in jobs in countries other than India.