This chapter sets out the handbook’s scope and framework for comparing labour migration admission systems across OECD and EU countries, focussing on 220 temporary, employer-sponsored pathways. It outlines a five‑step admission architecture – from talent attraction and facilitation, through verification of need for international recruitment, eligibility screening, acceleration tools, and visa issuance. It also highlights key trade‑offs shaping labour migration pathway design and how countries can use these tools to build labour migration systems that serve their objectives.
Admitting Labour Migrants
Making Migration Management Work
Abstract
This handbook provides a detailed overview of the practices currently used across OECD countries to govern the admission of labour migrants, and the considerations relevant to assessing the suitability and effectiveness – the use case – of each tool.
The decision to admit labour migrants in OECD countries is composed of a series of separate elements: a general framework for the role economic migration is meant to play, the definition of admission categories, the establishment of specific channels and pathways – the permits or visas through which workers are admitted – the choice of tools to manage these pathways, and the administration of issuance. This handbook focusses on the definition of admission categories, the channels established, and the tools that govern issuance.
The general framework governing the role of economic migration shapes decisions on admission categories, pathways, and the choice of tools. The underlying assumptions about this role vary considerably across OECD countries. Some countries – primarily those outside Europe, which the OECD has classified as “settlement” countries – have historically treated labour migration as a cornerstone of nation-building and long-term economic and demographic development. This is reflected in policy frameworks that include major programmes granting labour migrants immediate permanent residence with full labour market mobility: an approach rarely found elsewhere in the OECD. These countries also offer temporary programmes, often allowing “dual intent” – i.e. the possibility of changing status into the permanent residence category. European and Asian OECD countries have, by contrast, treated labour migration as a series of exceptions to a general policy of exclusion, based on expressed demand. While this approach has given way in recent decades to broader considerations of competitiveness and longer-term labour force sustainability, temporary and conditional admission – even where it frequently leads to eventual permanent residence – remains the only form of first admission in these countries. These overarching considerations shape the definition of admission categories and the pathway structures created within them.
The tools to govern admission are not, in themselves, policies – they are mechanisms and measures to achieve policy goals. The same tool can be applied across different labour migration systems, regardless of the general framework in place, and can serve different objectives depending on how it is calibrated. These tools may define general eligibility conditions, shape the accessibility of channels, or affect how pathways function in practice. They can be used to narrow or expand eligibility, accelerate or delay review, and penalise or reward employers – all in accordance with the policy objectives they are designed to serve.
The policy rationale and objectives of labour migration are not always straightforward to identify. In many OECD countries, migration legislation has accumulated over decades, with pathways and associated tools reflecting successive policy development cycles rather than a single coherent design. Nonetheless, the underlying rationale and objectives may be reflected in formal documents – white papers, national strategies, roadmaps, or even preambles to legislation. Where they exist, these documents provide the framework within which specific admission tools are selected and calibrated, setting the objectives that tools are meant to serve. More broadly, articulating medium- to long-term priorities and explaining the underlying policy logic can be useful in enhancing policy coherence, facilitating co‑ordination across administrations, and supporting effective monitoring and evaluation (European Migration Network (EMN) and OECD, 2025[1]).
Strategy documents vary considerably in scope: some are comprehensive, others focus on specific sectors or migration categories. Annex Figure 1.A.1 presents formal migration strategies in OECD countries with a labour migration focus. 27 OECD countries have an overarching strategy, which often encompasses labour migration. Six countries, all EU members, have separate labour migration strategies (Belgium, Finland, Germany, Latvia, the Slovak Republic, and Spain). These documents typically set high-level objectives, with performance indicators and targets; they may also call for the introduction, restructuring, or abolition of specific pathways, and provide guidance on which tools should be used to achieve stated goals.
For EU countries subject to the EU legal migration framework, EU-level strategy and policy objectives shape specific pathways, in line with the EU Directives. Eligibility conditions and criteria are established and determine the ways and directions in tools can be applied. The EU also provides strategy documents which set out objectives. In January 2026, the European Commission published the first European Asylum and Migration Management Strategy, a five‑year framework (2026‑2030) designed to support the consistent implementation of national migration and asylum strategies across the EU. It obliges member states to adopt national strategies, including an overall objective to attract talent to boost EU competitiveness. This has implications for national strategies, and the use of specific tools.
The report is structured around eight guiding questions designed to assist policymakers in understanding how OECD and EU countries have approached the decision of admitting labour migrants.
How are eligibility criteria applied?
How are labour market tests designed and executed?
What are shortage occupation lists and how are they designed and implemented?
How are numerical limits set and applied?
How do priority processing schemes operate?
How do recognised employer schemes work?
How do processing times, fees, and documentary requirements structure access to labour migration pathways?
How do public online platforms disseminate information and facilitate the recruitment of foreign workers?
Each of these questions is addressed in a separate chapter.
Labour migration pathways covered in the Handbook: definition and types
In this Handbook, a labour migration pathway is understood as the formal regulatory route that an individual must follow to be admitted into a country for the purpose of employment. A pathway is not a single rule. It is a structure of requirements, procedures and entitlements attached to a specific visa or residence permit with employment rights.
This analysis focuses on first admission through temporary labour migration pathways to OECD and EU countries that require a job offer from an employer. To maintain this focus and ensure comparability across countries, certain categories of labour migration are excluded from its scope, notably intra-corporate transferees, participants in working holiday schemes, self-employed workers, investors and entrepreneurs.
The analysis also excludes labour migration pathways which grant immediate permanent residence and full labour market mobility, such as the economic streams of the permanent migration programmes in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States. or these countries, the analysis covers temporary pathways only, although it draws on permanent pathways where they offer relevant examples of how specific tools are applied. For EU countries covered by the EU legal migration framework, the analysis considers the specific conditions and characteristics of each national transposition of EU permits individually, rather than only the characteristics of the permit as defined in the relevant Directive.
This Handbook focusses on admission policies for temporary labour migration to OECD and EU countries; for EU countries, this necessarily refers exclusively to third-country nationals. For each country, the labour migration framework was reviewed, based on the full set of visa and permit categories used by the OECD in its statistical monitoring of migration, and distinct temporary labour migration pathways or permits were identified. In total, 220 pathways were included in the review. For each pathway, 73 elements were examined, covering the eligibility conditions and tools used to decide whether to admit a worker. The report also reviews the information portals that public authorities operate to provide information on labour migration channels in each country. The permits covered and the elements reviewed are listed in the Annex. The initial analysis was based on policy settings in place in mid-2025, with updates up to June 2026.
Labour migration architecture: Elements of pathways
The labour migration architecture of a country is the combination of pathways governing the admission of different types of labour migrants, whose eligibility is determined based on their individual characteristics (e.g. education, occupation, salary) and the characteristics of their potential employer (e.g. legal status, financial situation, history of compliance). Figure 1.1 presents a stylised version of the core steps and elements that governments need to consider when making the decision to admit a labour migrant.
Source: OECD Secretariat.
Step 0. Attract talent and facilitate access to international recruitment
The labour migration admission framework is just one part of the international recruitment system, which includes the entire chain of awareness raising, matching and attraction. Many OECD governments provide operational support to facilitate international recruitment.
Public authorities may develop dedicated online platforms to centralise job vacancies, provide step-by-step migration guidance, and connect employers directly with foreign candidates filtered by sector or skill level. Some governments complement these digital tools with skills validation and training programmes in countries of origin. These initiatives ensure candidates meet domestic requirements in strategic high-demand sectors like healthcare, ICT, and engineering (EMN and OECD, 2025[2]).
Other forms of facilitation of international recruitment include bilateral and multilateral labour agreements (see Box 2.3 in Chapter 2). These are admission frameworks that go beyond standard migration agreements by embedding recruitment support, pre‑departure preparation, and in some cases training, into the migration pathway itself. Skills mobility partnerships combine legal pathways, pre‑departure skills development, and job placement within a single framework. Specific initiatives in co‑operation with third countries, such as EU Talent Partnerships, or pre‑departure training under Japan’s Specified Skilled Worker programme, may support countries and employers by organising training and validation in specific skills, job matching, and pre‑departure preparation. Italy also has recent experience combining employer-led job matching, pre‑departure vocational and language training under Article 23 of the Italian Immigration Law to facilitate labour migration. These efforts aim to make international hiring more predictable and scalable for the private sector.
Step 1. Verify international recruitment need
First, to verify that labour market grounds exist for admission of a foreign worker, governments assess that:
they are addressing a need that cannot be met promptly or efficiently by the resident labour force;
their employment will not have adverse effects on local workers.
This verification requires specific policy tools that facilitate making an evidence‑based solution on whether a labour migrant can be admitted. The most common policy levers utilised by governments include labour market tests (LMT), numerical limits, and occupation lists based on established shortages (SOL). Each of these tools takes different approaches towards verifying the need for international recruitment.
LMT require employers to check that no local worker can fill their vacancy before offering it to a foreign national. The definition of “local” (territorial coverage) and “worker” (consideration for recruitment) varies. Numerical limits are volumes of admission pre‑established by authorities based on existing or forecasted labour shortages. Through SOL, authorities identify occupations with persistent labour shortages in advance and designate them as eligible for simplified admission.
Each of these tools structures the verification process in different ways. The LMT frontloads the verification of labour market need. In cases where the employer does not already have a candidate abroad in mind, they may have posted vacancies in such a way to satisfy LMT requirements before filing, as part of their efforts to find a candidate; in other cases, they go through the LMT once they have decided on a candidate abroad to recruit. Numerical limits and SOL backload it by providing specific criteria that simplify admission decisions of individual cases. LMT puts the burden of proof of a labour shortage on the employer, while numerical limits and SOL require that governments collect labour data and consult stakeholders to establish the volume or specific sectors/occupations that experience chronic shortages. These mechanisms are analysed in greater detail in Chapters 3, 4 and 5 of this report.
Step 2. Check worker and employer meet eligibility criteria
Once the need for international recruitment is confirmed, the next step is for authorities to assess whether a foreign worker with a job offer and their employers are suitable for admission through a specific pathway.
Each labour migration pathway usually has a series of eligibility criteria that need to be met for the foreign worker to be admitted. These criteria are also a key tool for deciding who gets access to the labour market based on their individual characteristics. In some systems, where other tools like the LMT, numerical limits or SOL are not applied, they become the main lever to make the decision to admit a labour migrant.
Worker eligibility criteria typically include educational/qualification, salary and occupational thresholds, years of experience, age, language proficiency, and nationality, among others. Employer eligibility criteria focus on their legal or fiscal status, financial situation, time since foundation, history of compliance with labour and immigration law, among others. These criteria are presented in more detail, with empirical data on how OECD countries apply them across different labour migration pathways, in Chapter 2.
Step 2 bis. Accelerated admission tools
Acceleration tools can be considered an intermediate step in the decision-making process for admitting labour migrants. The two mechanisms reviewed in this report are trusted employer schemes and priority processing services.
Priority processing services accelerate the handling of work‑permit or visa applications for selected categories of migrants by offering shorter processing times, simplified administrative steps or access to dedicated processing channels. As intermediate tools, fast‑track schemes do not define who is eligible to enter the labour market but determine how quickly and predictably eligible applications are processed. This tool and its importance for making the decision to admit labour migrants are reviewed in Chapter 6.
Recognised or trusted employer schemes are an admission policy tool to streamline the recruitment of foreign workers through a simplified process. Their main objective is to reduce the administrative burden on immigration authorities and employers by making the admission process more efficient. They serve as a fast-track channel because authorities review and approve employers in advance after a thorough vetting process. This tool, its uses and main elements are analysed in Chapter 7 of this report.
Jobseeker visas are often considered another tool to accelerate the admission of foreign workers, allowing them to enter and look for work on the basis of their profile (e.g. education, experience, age) so that they can find an employer directly. Although jobseeker visas fall outside the scope of this report, Box 1.1 provides a brief overview of how they have been used in OECD countries.
Jobseeker visas allow foreign nationals to enter a country temporarily to look for work without a prior job offer. Governments have introduced these visas to reduce friction in job matching, signal openness to international talent, and attract qualified workers who might not apply through employer‑led channels.
Experience across the OECD has been mixed. Jobseeker visas tend to work best where matching barriers are high or where employers – especially small and medium‑sized firms – lack the capacity to recruit directly from abroad. They can also help workers in regulated or fragmented labour markets make in‑person contacts. Where labour shortages are clear and employer‑driven recruitment already works well, jobseeker visas add limited value.
Most jobseeker visas apply eligibility criteria to limit entry to candidates with higher chances of labour market integration. Korea, the Netherlands and Germany, for example, use points‑based systems to balance qualifications, work experience, language skills, age, and shortage occupations. Japan and Sweden have very restrictive criteria in terms of high education or prior salary. While points‑based selection has long supported permanent skilled migration in countries such as Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, its use for temporary jobseeker visas remains recent and limited. On the other hand, Denmark and Portugal have closed their temporary jobseeker pathways.
Effective implementation requires more than admission rules. Countries that invest in promotion, digital application processes, and self‑assessment tools reduce mismatches and discourage speculative applications. Data collection and continuous review matter to ensure that selection criteria remain aligned with labour market needs and that jobseeker visas lead to transitions into work or other residence statuses.
Germany’s Chancenkarte
Germany has long offered a job‑search visa for qualified workers, but uptake remained modest. In 2023, it introduced the Opportunity Card (Chancenkarte), which uses a points‑based system and grants temporary residence for up to 12 months to seek employment. The card allows limited secondary employment, short work trials, and later status change into employment or training permits. Germany paired the reform with targeted promotion, digital tools, and plans for systematic monitoring. By mid-June 2025, about 11 500 Chancenkarte visas had been issued. Early experience highlights both the potential of jobseeker visas and the need for careful design and follow‑up.
Step 3. Set additional requirements and guarantees for admission and permit characteristics
The labour migration architecture is also defined by the administrative functioning of the mechanisms that form it. Factors such as application processing times, fees and levies, and refusal rates cut across the whole labour migration system and can influence whether a pathway is accessible or not, even when eligibility criteria are met. This dimension also covers the characteristics of the permit itself: its duration, the scope of the associated work authorisation in terms of hours and workplace, and whether, and under what conditions, the holder can change employer.
Chapter 9 reviews the administrative indicators that shed light on how the labour migration system functions, and how these factors influence the choice of pathway for international recruitment.
Step 4. Visa issuance and admission at the border
The final element of decision takes place at consular posts, where relevant. In some cases, in-country issuance is possible, avoiding the consular procedures and visa process. In visa issuance, the wait for appointments, processing times, visa and biometric fees, and requests for evidence of means of subsistence, health insurance coverage, and housing may influence the decision. Discussion of visa issuance processes is included in Chapter 9 and touched on where relevant in discussion of other tools such as priority processing.
Labour migration lies at the intersection of multiple, and often competing, policy objectives. For this reason, most countries have multiple labour migration channels with different conditions. The choice and the settings of tools chosen to govern these channels also reflect decisions about these trade‑offs. The trade‑offs involved in the use of individual tools are discussed in the chapters which follow. The following trade‑offs are relevant to the design of pathways.
Using migration to address immediate needs and to support human resource development
Governments can determine the extent to which their admission policy, and the pathways it offers, prioritise responding to immediate labour market needs over addressing long-term goals for the evolution of the labour force, taking into account demographic trends and shifts in skills supply and demand, and productivity. Admission policies designed to fill labour shortages in the short term may not serve the goal of increasing the long-term stock of human capital to foster innovation and productivity, and vice versa.
Ensuring access to international recruitment, incentivising investment in skills for resident workers
Policymakers may decide to focus their efforts on attracting skilled workers to strategic economic sectors, such as healthcare, technology, and energy, to address skill gaps quickly and promote economic growth in the short term. For the major, long-standing temporary pathways in most OECD countries, as well as many of the other temporary labour migration pathways covered in this document, the main objective behind admission is to address labour market needs that cannot be met promptly and efficiently by the resident workforce, without adverse effects on local workers. In these pathways, the intention is for foreign workers to complement local workers’ skills, rather than displace them. Defining which labour market needs cannot be met promptly or efficiently requires a judgement on how long employers should have to wait, and how much effort they should make to recruit locally, before they can turn to recruitment from abroad.
The trade-off goes beyond considerations of the current resident labour force, because easier access to foreign workers to address shortages may discourage the development of skills among resident workers. This may perpetuate skill gaps and increase the dependence on foreign labour. Policymakers must therefore weigh providing firms and workers with incentives to invest in skills development, even at the cost of unfilled vacancies, against addressing shortages quickly, at the risk of reducing the interest in, and value of, acquiring these skills.
Setting a skills threshold and addressing high vacancy rates at all skills levels
Countries can also place greater emphasis on international recruitment for highly skilled occupations. where the pool of qualified candidates is more limited by nature. At the same time, they can restrict available pathways for low‑ and medium‑skilled occupations, on the assumption that these roles can more readily be filled by the resident workforce. In practice, however, the divide between “highly skilled”, “medium-skilled” and “low-skilled” is not always clear. Skill levels are not always easily delineated or matched to educational qualifications or certification. Labour shortages can arise in occupations that require few formal qualifications but depend on specific experience or competencies that are scarce among resident workers or difficult to develop within a short timeframe.
Admitting migrants conditionally and temporarily, making a bet on long term adaptability
Policymakers may also consider the conditions of stay – including the rights and entitlements – attached to a given labour migration pathway. Where the objective is to admit workers on a strictly temporary basis to address specific shortages, limiting the duration of stay and the scope of entitlements (such as family rights, permit renewal, or changes of employer) may be consistent with the conditionality of admission. By contrast, where migrants are admitted with the aim of supporting longer-term growth and productivity, policymakers may opt to extend rights and facilitate longer-term or permanent residence.
These choices, however, involve trade‑offs. Short stays combined with limited rights often require more intensive monitoring and enforcement by authorities to ensure compliance with permit conditions and return at the end of the authorised period. Authorities must also guard against employers taking advantage of the limited bargaining power of employees whose stay depends on continued employment with them. Conversely, generous permit conditions do not guarantee successful talent attraction and retention in the long-term.
While the conditions granted under each pathway, including ancillary rights such as family reunification and access to permanent residence, are out of scope of this report, the eligibility conditions may reflect the intentions of short- or longer-term stay. Pathways with restricted family rights and limits on access to permanent residence may be less demanding in terms of earnings and long-term adaptability. Pathways allowing accompanying family and leading to permanent residence may have higher eligibility requirements to ensure that workers admitted are able to support their families and have a long term positive fiscal impact.
Strictly considering the labour market, using labour migration to achieve other goals
Another key challenge is reconciling labour migration with non-economic goals. Governments balance immediate labour market needs against broader strategic interests. This may lead to prioritisation of the admission of workers not only for their labour market contribution, but for achieving other objectives. For example, provisions for labour migration admission may be included in Bilateral Trade Agreements or migration co‑operation agreements. These may even affect the way that tools are implemented, with exemptions and prioritisation for nationals of certain countries.
The design of pathways, and the choice of tools, reflect the decisions on how to manage these trade‑offs – balancing economic demand against social protection, or short-term vacancies against long-term human capital – as well as others. The chapters that follow further explore the way specific tools are adapted to serve multiple goals.
The detailed and comparative analysis of the tools and procedures presented and reviewed in this report is meant to provide policymakers with use cases and indications on how to employ them. The decision to admit labour migrants is multi-layered, responding to different policy objectives and producing different measures. A smart migration system uses these tools to achieve several outcomes.
First, an efficiency gain. The admission process can involve less administrative time and make better use of technology within the tools, leading to faster turnaround and costs savings for public administrations as well as users.
Second, an effectiveness gain, to respond better to the multiple objectives with which labour migration is increasingly tasked.
And thirdly, to better respond to public perception of labour migration management, by providing clear evidence of control, transparency and predictability.
References
[2] EMN and OECD (2025), New and innovative ways to attract foreign talents in the EU.
[1] European Migration Network (EMN) and OECD (2025), Designing Migration Strategies, Directorate-General for Migration and Home Affairs, European Commission, https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/system/files/2025-03/2024_EMN-OECD_inform_designing_migration_strategies.pdf.
[3] OECD (2023), Can Job Search Visas help OECD Countries improve labour migration matching?, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/efb4446d-en.
OECD countries that implement a formal migration strategy, 2025‑2026
Source: (European Migration Network (EMN) and OECD, 2025[1]), OECD Secretariat.