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The population of a territorial unit depends not only on fertility and death rates, but also migration fluctuations. Migration is the change in human habitation, from one territorial unit to another within a certain period of time.

Because migration affects the process of socio-economic development, the issue of migration has received attention from policymakers as well as the entire society.

According to the report on Population Change and Family Planning on April 1, 2020 by the General Statistics Office, the number of inter-provincial migrants in the 12 months before the survey was estimated at 695,100 people. Comparing by region, the Southeast had the highest positive net inter-regional migration rate in the country, about 18.7‰, with the immigration rate of 20.4‰ and the emigration rate of 1.7‰.

In 2020, the region with great attraction for employment was the Southeast with the highest positive net migration rate in the country of over 338,800 immigrants, followed by the Red River Delta with 67,400 people. The Mekong Delta was the leading region in the country in terms of the number of out-migrants, with more than 200,000 people, and the North Central and Central Coast regions ranked second with more than 143,900 people.

The southern province of Binh Duong took the lead for the positive net migration rate (58.6‰), followed by the northern province of Bac Ninh with 35.8‰, and HCM City 18‰.

In contrast, the provinces with the highest negative net migration rates were the southern province of Hau Giang (-23.8‰), Tra Vinh (-21.5‰) and Soc Trang (-193‰).

The provinces with a high net migration rate are those having a lot of industrial parks and training schools. This proves that employment, training and learning have great influence on migration.

The report also shows that migration flows between cities accounted for the largest proportion of migration flows, reaching 43%. Meanwhile, migration from rural to urban areas accounted for only about 31.2%, and the rest was from rural-to-rural areas.

"This shows that population and employment pressures in urban areas continued to increase over the years," the report said.

If broken down by age group and sex, the proportion of migrants in the 20-24 age group was the highest, followed by those in the 25-29 and 15-19 age group. By gender, the age group 20-24 remained the group with the highest proportion of migrants for both men and women.

The largest proportion of people's reasons for migration was "Finding a job/Starting a new job", with about 59.5%. Other reasons included: Going with family/Moving house” (17.4%) and “Going to school” (11.5%). Particularly for women, marriage was also the main reason influencing the decision to migrate, accounting for about 10.7%, compared to 2% for men.

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