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World Talent Ranking

Analyzing how countries develop, attract, and retain the calibre of domestic and international highly skilled talent they need to secure long-term value creation.

World Talent Ranking

Analyzing how countries develop, attract, and retain the calibre of domestic and international highly skilled talent they need to secure long-term value creation.

What do we mean when we talk about talent?

Moving the cogs in a country’s productivity system requires the right kind of talent. Let’s consider them the oil. The usefulness of this oil depends on all manner of inputs, such as the quality of the education system and the attractiveness of the country to foreigners. The output? A well-greased talent competitiveness machine.

Of course, this is the ideal, and it is the pinnacle that the 69 global economies in our World Talent Ranking could reach. And yet, this is not a competition but competitiveness: the best use of an economy’s resources or, more specifically, in the case of talent competitiveness, productivity systems.

Using thousands of survey answers from senior executives computed alongside hard data, we can give a fair picture of how economies at different stages of development are performing in the art of sustaining their talent pools.

We view the talent competitiveness of countries through a triple lens:

1. The state of investment and development in home-grown talent.

Encompassing the size of public investment in education and pupil-teacher ratios.

2. How much a country appeals to local and overseas talent.

Dependent on factors such as cost of living and quality of life.

3. The degree of skills and competencies that exist in the talent pool.

Including the growth of the labor force and the level of experience and competence of senior managers.

IMD research reveals executives prioritize pay over quality of life when contemplating overseas offers

The results of the 2025 IMD World Talent Ranking (WTR) may aid strategies of multinational corporations struggling to fill international roles.

Results from the 2025 IMD World Talent Ranking (WTR) indicate that financial security and tangible benefits are the most frequently cited drivers for international relocation, contrasting with the pre-COVID-19 pandemic era, when quality of life, cultural fit, and language ranked higher.

The results, obtained by crunching 31 pieces of data across 69 global economies, come amid geopolitical instability, inflation, and cost-of-living pressures, which are reshaping executives’ willingness to relocate abroad.

“Financial incentives are highest for executives in countries experiencing economic uncertainty or rapid change, and lowest in environments considered to be financially secure or predictable,” said José Caballero, WCC Senior Economist.

Read the full story here

Arturo Bris, WCC Director, on the global climate for talent in 2025:

“In a fragmented global environment, talent alongside capital remains a uniquely global factor, with quality of life being a major driver of talent mobility.”

2025 Report

Browse the full report below or download it here

Methodology

Download full methodology here

Goal: Assess the status and the development of competencies necessary for enterprises and the economy to achieve long-term value creation. Do so by using a set of indicators which measure the development, retention and attraction of a domestic and international highly-skilled workforce.

Define talent competitiveness across three main factors:
1. Investment and Development
2. Appeal
3. Readiness

Deposit 31 pieces of criteria across the factors. Each factor does not necessarily have the same number of criteria. For example, it takes more criteria to assess Readiness than to evaluate Investment and Development.

Each factor, independently of the number of criteria it contains, has the same weight in the overall consolidation of results, namely 1/3 (3×33.3 ~100).

Criteria can be hard data, which analyze talent development as it can be measured (e.g. Total Public Expenditure on Education) or soft data, which analyze the quality of these investments as they can be perceived (e.g. Management Education).

Aggregate the criteria to calculate the scores of each factor which function as the basis to generate the overall ranking.

Factors summed up

Investment and development

The investment in and development of home-grown talent

Appeal

The extent to which a country taps into the overseas talent pool

Readiness

The availability of skills and competencies in the talent pool

Computing the ranking

World Competitiveness Online

IMD World Competitiveness Online is a unique and comprehensive database on the competitiveness of nations. It includes time series from the IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook, the leading annual report published by IMD since 1989, from the IMD World Talent Ranking and from the IMD World Digital Competitiveness Ranking.

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Order the IMD World Competitiveness package, or the online database or Yearbook+digital version (PDF), as well as individual country profiles and factors.

Smart City Index

Published by The Smart City Observatory (IMD and Singapore University of Technology and Design – SUTD). The Smart city index offers a balanced focus on economic and technological aspects of smart cities on the one hand, and “humane dimensions” of smart cities (quality of life, environment, inclusiveness) on the other.

World Talent Ranking

What do we mean when we talk about talent?

2025 Report

Computing the ranking

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