During the first months of 2019, the number of people migrating to Russia significantly spiked, from 57K in January-April 2018 to 98K in January-April 2019. The growth was fully achieved by the increased number of newly arrived people (219K) while the number of people who left the country did not change, according to the Economic Monitoring of Russia released by the Yegor Gaidar Institute of Economic Policy and the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration.
Migration-related population growth in Russia over January to April 2019 was the highest in the past decade. The number of foreign work migrants in Russia slightly increased while the share of legalized guest workers in the labor market went down.
Russia’s population growth due to migration from the CIS countries increased by 57.4% and by 420% from other countries. The major migrant providers are Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Tajikistan, Armenia, Belarus and Moldova.
The number of Chinese migrants increased by 135%, Serbian by 117% and Syrian by 93%.