In Manila, during the early days of the war on Iran, Philippine Migrant Workers Secretary Hans Leo Cacdac announced that the government was closely monitoring the situation in the region and that emergency plans were ready should it become necessary to evacuate Filipino citizens working there.
For the Philippines, whose hundreds of thousands of citizens work in Gulf countries, any military escalation in the Middle East could pose a threat affecting the lives of millions of families who depend on remittances from workers abroad.
At a time when several European countries began arranging flights to evacuate their citizens or organize their return from the region amid disrupted air travel and the closure of multiple airspaces, India—where government data indicates that more than nine million Indian nationals reside in Gulf Cooperation Council countries—established a special operations room to monitor the crisis. On March 7, India announced that more than 52,000 Indians had returned from the Gulf between March 1 and March 7 amid disruptions to transit routes and flights.
These steps reveal a growing sense of concern and anticipation about the possibility that a broader wave of foreign workers could begin leaving the Gulf if the war drags on.
Travelers wait at Muscat International Airport as the Sultanate of Oman facilitates the return of stranded passengers in Gulf countries to their home countries (March 5, 2026 – Reuters).
Will Gulf Economies Be Affected?
When countries that supply most of the Gulf’s expatriate labor force, such as India and the Philippines, begin thinking along these lines, it suggests that the threat has expanded to affect the human foundation on which Gulf economies are built. Gulf countries do not rely on foreign labor merely as supplementary support but as a near-complete operational base across large sectors.
The International Labor Organization notes that migrant workers make up between 76 and 95 percent of the labor force in Gulf countries, and that non-citizens account for at least 95 percent of workers in the private sector in Qatar and Kuwait.
In the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, for example, foreigners represent about 86.9 percent and 88.2 percent of the population respectively, while in Kuwait they make up 70.1 percent, according to data from the Gulf labor Markets, Migration and Population Program.
For this reason, Robert Mogielnicki, a non-resident fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, appears precise in describing Gulf economies in an interview with Alhurra as “sensitive” to this scenario, “but not yet at risk.”
In his view, Gulf governments “will do whatever is necessary to retain people in strategic industries and roles.”
The issue is not only about the number of workers who might leave, but about governments’ ability to prevent an exodus that could affect sectors that cannot be quickly replaced. Any large-scale departure could paralyze both the economy and public life.
The International Labor Organization explains that migrant labor in the Gulf is concentrated particularly in construction, domestic work, and the service sector—jobs that many citizens avoid due to wage levels or the nature of the work.
For this reason, Mogielnicki believes the greatest risk may not lie in a large and immediate departure, but rather in the complications surrounding future labor flows. In other words, recruiting new workers could become more difficult, more costly, and increasingly tied to geopolitical risk calculations.
As he told Alhurra, “the most significant potential challenge will be less about disruptions from immediate outward flows, and more about the new obstacles associated with strengthening incoming flows in the future.”
Smoke rises following an Iranian drone attack targeting a fuel storage facility near Bahrain International Airport (March 12, 2026 – Reuters).
Impact Beyond the Gulf
The potential labor crisis in the Gulf also reveals another dimension of the consequences of the ongoing war between the United States and Israel on one side and Iran on the other. The countries that supply labor to the Gulf would also be heavily affected because of the revenues generated by overseas employment.
In 2025, personal remittances to the Philippines reached $39.62 billion, equivalent to about 7.3 percent of the country’s gross domestic product.
The World Bank estimated India’s remittances at about $129 billion in 2024, making it the world’s largest recipient of remittances, while Bangladesh recorded $30.33 billion in its 2024–2025 fiscal year.
In Nepal—where some citizens were stranded at Kathmandu airport and unable to travel to Gulf countries due to the war—World Bank data shows that remittances once again accounted for about 26.2 percent of GDP in 2024.
These figures represent household income, foreign currency reserves, and purchasing power. It is therefore no exaggeration that the World Bank considers remittances a flow that collectively exceeds both foreign direct investment and official development assistance to low- and middle-income countries.
Stranded travelers at Kathmandu Airport after flights to Gulf cities were canceled (February 28, 2026 – Reuters).
A Lesson from Iraq’s 1990 Invasion of Kuwait
After Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, estimates linked to the International Labor Organization indicated that about 1.5 million workers and dependents had fled Iraq and Kuwait within just two months. United Nations and human rights reports documented the passage of hundreds of thousands of third-country nationals through Jordan, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia, while the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees helped facilitate the return of large numbers of them.
Host countries lost part of their workforce, and countries of origin lost remittances that had been financing consumption and stability. The entire system then needed a long period to reorganize itself.
In recent years, Gulf countries have already begun building partial alternatives through permanent residency systems for foreigners or through job nationalization policies.
Saudi Arabia announced in February 2026 a new phase of the “Developed Sectors” program aimed at localizing more than 340,000 additional jobs over three years. Meanwhile, the United Arab Emirates continues to require companies with 50 or more employees to achieve an annual increase of 2 percent in the employment of citizens in skilled positions.
But these policies were designed to gradually rebalance the labor market, not to fill a sudden gap if the movement of millions of workers were to be disrupted.
The article is a translation of the original Arabic.
Ezat Wagdi Ba Awaidhan
Ezat Wagdi Ba Awaidhan, a Yemeni journalist and documentary filmmaker based in Washington, D.C., holds a master's degree in media studies.
