For the second consecutive year, immigration declined among the member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in 2025, reaching six million new permanent immigrants (a drop of 1.6% compared to 2024). While labor migration increased (up by 13%), humanitarian migration for those granted refugee status fell by 26%. These are the findings of the OECD’s annual “International Migration Outlook” report, published Thursday, November 12.

“What’s new is that these figures hide very different trends depending on the region and country,” explained Jean-Christophe Dumont, head of the international migration division at the OECD and editor of the report. Immigration increased by 4.7% across European OECD member countries, reaching just over three million people. This rise was driven by the strong dynamics of migration flows in Southern European countries – Portugal (up by 139%), Italy (up by 46%), Spain (up by 25%) and, to a much lesser extent, France (up by 9%).

Despite tough rhetoric on immigration, the Italian government led by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni did, in fact, expand labor immigration pathways and increase admissions in sectors facing persistent labor shortages. In Spain, the rise in migration flows was linked to the implementation, in May 2025, of a major immigration reform that simplified residence procedures and broadened access to regularization processes. As for the particularly sharp increase in Portugal, it resulted from the approval of a significant backlog of applications, leading to the granting of around 300,000 residence permits between September 2024 and December 2025.