ACCORDING to the United Nations' 'International Migration 2020 Highlights,' the pandemic has decreased the stock of international migrants by 2 million in mid-2020, representing a 27-percent reduction of expected growth from 2019. For context, 3.6 percent of the world's population are migrants, with a steady growth over the last two decades — from 173 million in 2000 to 221 million in 2010 and 281 million in 2020.

The International Organization for Migration's (IOM) 'Covid-19 Impact Assessment on Returned Overseas Filipino Workers' also cited that there was a 75-percent drop in the deployment of OFWs for 2020, the lowest since 1990. Only 549,841 OFWs were deployed in 2019, compared with a high of 2.16 million in 2019. As of July 2021, over 600,000 OFWs have been displaced by the pandemic since May 2020, according to government figures.