Eurostat has recently started to collect and disseminate data related to the flows of household income generated by the permanent or temporary movement of people to other countries. This paper highlights the main characteristics of the newly disseminated data set, which includes data on workers` remittances and compensation of employees. Outflows of compensation of employees reached €41.6 billion in 2009, while outflows of workers` remittances reached €29.6 billion - making a total of €71.2 billion. However, this figure represents a fall of 4% compared to 2008 and the first decline after a long period of continuous growth.

In the EU27, money sent by migrants to their former country of residence, usually referred to as workers' remittances1, amounted to 31.8 bn euro in 2008, compared with 31.3 bn in 2007 and 19.4 bn in 2004. These figures include both intra-EU27 and extra-EU27 flows. The increase in workers' remittances over recent years was mainly due to a sharp rise in extra-EU27 flows (from 11.5 bn in 2004 to 22.5 bn in 2008), while intra-EU27 flows rose less rapidly (from 7.9 bn to 9.3 bn). Consequently, the share of extra-EU27 remittances in the total has risen from 59% in 2004 to 71% in 2008.