Migrants' remittances—payments sent by foreign-born workers back to their home country—have become a significant source of monetary inflows for many countries. In 2009, such remittances from the United States to other countries totaled more than $48 billion, nearly 30 percent more in inflation-adjusted terms than they were in 2000. People in Mexico receive more of the remittances sent from the United States than do residents of any other country.

This document updates and expands upon the Congressional Budget Office's (CBO's) May 2005 publication Remittances: International Payments by Migrants. That paper included data through 2003; this document includes data through 2009. The existing data on global remittances are not of very high quality, however, and the comparisons and trends reported here should be viewed only as approximations.

In August 2008, the U.S. Census Bureau sponsored a supplement to the monthly Current Population Survey (CPS) questionnaire. The Immigration/Emigration Supplement, also referred to as the Migration Supplement, included questions on monetary transfers and four additional topics – citizenship, year of entry, residence one year ago, and residents and emigrants abroad. The Monetary Transfers section is noteworthy because it represents the first time questions on both the giving and receiving of transfers were included on a large, federally sponsored, nationally representative survey in the United States. It is also significant because the questions were administered to both native and foreign-born households. The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, it describes the CPS Migration Supplement, a new source of migration-related data. Second, it discusses the quality of the monetary transfer data and presents some initial results on the occurrence, frequency, and amount of transfers sent and received.

US Census Bureau report on employment in March 2010.