2023-09-24 07:50:00
Today, EU citizens still represent 7.7% of workers but they have been largely overtaken by non-EU citizens (9.3% of workers). A sort of achievement for the most liberal Brexiters, who had demanded during the referendum campaign the end of the “privilege” granted to EU nationals, authorized to come and work in the United Kingdom without requiring a visa, unlike others. many citizens of Commonwealth countries.
The misleading increase in immigration to the United Kingdom: “The figures are too high”
A shift that began during the pandemic
This shift began during the Covid-19 pandemic. At the end of February 2020, 2.61 million European citizens were working in the United Kingdom, a figure close to the historic record recorded in November 2019 (2.66 million) and 301,600 more than at the time of the referendum. These figures debunk the myth of a United Kingdom which has lost its attractiveness in the eyes of European workers following the British decision to leave the EU. At the same time, the number of non-community people increased by 334,800 to 2.11 million. However, following ten months of the pandemic, a date which also corresponds to the end of the transition period, 164,400 Europeans had left the country. A figure to be compared to the 9,300 non-EU foreigners who started working in the United Kingdom during this period.
Over the following months, the curve continued to reverse. Very quickly. In 2022, only 26,830 EU nationals received a work visa, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. While 59,944 work visas were granted to Indians, 13,449 to Nigerians and 12,786 to Zimbabweans… for a final 240,840 work visas allocated to non-EU citizens, i.e. 103,788 visas more than in 2019.
So much so that “in February 2022, the number of salaried jobs of third-country nationals for the first time became higher than that of European Union nationals”, indicates a British tax document. In December 2022, the number of salaried jobs of third-country nationals was 497,100 higher than that of EU nationals. ”
The German far right capitulates (temporarily) on the idea of a “Dexit”: an “editorial error”
Positive immigration for the economy
For Jonathan Portes, a professor of economics at London’s King’s College, “by ending free movement, the new post-Brexit migration system has reduced the flow of relatively less skilled and lower paid workers in certain sectors. But by liberalizing migration flows from the rest of the world, it has significantly increased the number of people coming to work in the health system, the care sector, and highly skilled, well-paid positions in information technology and communications, finance and professional services. This has eased pressure on labor in these sectors and is likely to have increased GDP and GDP per capita, benefiting the economy and public finances”. Not known for his sympathy towards Brexit, this specialist in the migration issue believes that “immigration is proving to be the success of Brexit for the moment”.
Tax statistics detail the distribution of foreign workers in the different sectors of economic activity. Extra-community foreigners now outnumber Europeans in retail and wholesale sales, hotels and restaurants, administrative jobs, and scientific and technical jobs. They have also seen their lead progress significantly in health.
While 25% of workers in agriculture, forestry and fishing were European in July 2016, the key harvest month, the latter only represented 15% of these workers in July 2022. The loss of 20,000 of the 50,000 European summer workers in these sectors was compensated by the hiring of 10,000 non-EU and 15,000 British workers. Overall, the country has hired 1.05 million more Britons since the referendum, 1.19 million non-EU foreign workers (an increase of 67%) and even 159,400 EU nationals, even if the total of the latter has been in constant decline for three and a half years.
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