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Middle East conflict stalls job hopes for Indian migrant workers
Because of the US-Israel-Iran war, thousands of recruitments from India are affected and many Indian workers are forced to postpone their departure for the Gulf region
- PUBLISHED: Tue 10 Mar 2026, 7:01 PM
[Editor's Note: Follow Khaleej Times live blog amid US-Israel-Iran war for the latest regional developments.]
The US-Israel-Iran war is slowing down the hiring of Indian labourers to the Gulf, though thousands of them queue up outside visa application centres for the region in different cities, including Mumbai and Delhi. Scores of aspiring candidates were seen on the pavements outside the offices of the centres in Delhi on Tuesday, with many hoping that they would soon get the clearances and head to the Gulf for work.
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Dilip Yadav, who has worked as a fitter in Dubai for almost 10 years, told reporters in Delhi that he was helping his younger brother in getting a visa.
Without someone working in the Middle East, it would be difficult for his family to survive in his hometown in Bihar, he said. His younger brother had earlier worked in South Africa, but the wages in Dubai are much better, he said, as he waited outside a centre in Delhi.
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Another recruitment agent in Mumbai revealed that 100,000 to 150,000 Indians migrate every month to the Middle East. Now with a war raging in the region, many of them are forced to postpone their departure. “In a few months, more than 300,000 recruitments from India could be affected,” Amit Saxena, director of Ambe International, told the media in Mumbai.
According to recruitment consultancies, the entire process of hiring workers takes about three months. And demand from the Gulf, especially in refinery and petroleum sectors, continues to remain strong, drawing Indian recruiters and candidates.
Looking for jobs in the Gulf is widely prevalent across India, from Kerala and other southern states through Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and other parts of the country.
Increasingly, a lot of people from the IT, telecommunications and engineering sectors are also heading to the Gulf looking for better job opportunities.
Meanwhile, NRIs in the region accounted for almost 40 per cent of overseas Indians’ remittances of nearly $130 billion in 2024, according to Indian government estimates. The Reserve Bank of India, the central bank, in a report last year, noted that remittances from Indians in the GCC account for nearly four per cent of the country’s GDP.
