1 in 10
Bhutanese citizens now live and work abroad — the Prime Minister calls it the country's most serious national challenge
Bhutan's Diaspora: The Missing Generation in One Picture
A generation left, the country quietly reorganised itself around their absence and their money, and then someone else's immigration policy began closing the door.
The scale
A tenth of a country, living somewhere else
In June 2026 Bhutan’s Prime Minister named outmigration the country’s most serious national challenge and an existential risk. Two months earlier the government had formally declared a demographic crisis.
~77,000
Bhutanese living and working abroad — close to one in ten citizens, most of them young, educated and skilled. The government's own count is above 71,000
~40,000
of them in Australia. Australia's foreign ministry calls it 'Bhutan's largest community abroad'
12,424 → 25,363
Bhutan-born residents of Australia, 2020 to 2024, on the World Bank's count
The geography
Not the east coast — Perth
The most common mistake in Bhutan’s mental map of its own diaspora. State-level tables hide it; city-level data does not.
Perth
the largest Bhutanese community anywhere outside Bhutan — 4,313 at the 2021 Census and far more since; it now takes about two-thirds of all Bhutanese students in Australia
Canberra
second-largest single city (1,833), ahead of Adelaide, Brisbane and Sydney
~30 → 20,000+
Bhutanese in Perth, two decades ago versus today. In 2022 Bhutan was the most common non-Australian birthplace in Osborne Park, Glendalough and Wembley
The money
What they send back
Remittances have become Bhutan’s second-largest external income stream after hydropower — arriving household by household, with no policy architecture around them.
USD 343M
formal remittances received in 2025, from all countries
USD 253M
of it from Australia alone — 74% of the total, from a single country
USD 417M
the 2025/26 fiscal year total, up 72% on the year before
>7%
of the entire national deposit base, arriving every year from one overseas country
The cost
The classroom that emptied twice
The cohort that emigrates is the cohort that teaches — and the cohort that has children. So schools lose their staff and their pupils in the same decade, for the same reason.
1,193
teachers resigned in 2024 — a record, about ninety-nine a month — the year after the largest pay rise in the history of Bhutan's civil service (55–74%)
−1,897
net teachers lost 2020–2025: 5,516 resigned against 3,619 recruited
10,755 → 8,182
registered births, 2021 to 2024 — down roughly a quarter in three years
42
schools closed since 2020, with ~30,000 empty public-school seats
11,234 → 7,218
students passing Class XII, 2021 to 2025 — down 36%: the annual supply of qualified eighteen-year-olds to every institution in the country
The turn
And then the door began to close
−60%
Australian student-visa grants to Bhutanese, FY2022-23 to FY2024-25: 15,552 → 9,787 → 6,186
Level 3
Bhutan re-rated to Australia's strictest visa-scrutiny tier on 8 January 2026, after forged bank guarantees and fake degree certificates were found
~36%
of Bhutanese higher-education applications refused by February 2026
The arc
Eight years, one reorganisation
- 2018 About 8,000 Bhutanese in Australia. The pipeline — student visa → graduate visa → skilled visa → residency — is becoming self-sustaining
- 2020–22 Teacher resignations climb from 163 to 478 a year as the wage geography does its work
- FY2022-23 Student-visa grants peak at 15,552
- 2023 Bhutan answers with the largest civil-service pay rise in its history — 55–74% for teachers
- 2024 A record 1,193 teachers resign anyway. Births fall to 8,182
- Jan 2026 Australia moves Bhutan to Evidence Level 3. Grants are already 60% off the peak
- Jun 2026 The Prime Minister names outmigration the country's most serious national challenge
The full argument is in The Missing Generation; the visa mechanics in The Door Is Closing; the domestic cost in The Classroom That Emptied Twice.