Following a boom and bust in migration levels under the previous government, net migration to the UK dropped to pre-Brexit levels of around 200,000 in the year ending June 2025, according to new estimates from the Office for National Statistics.
Net migration—the number of people arriving long term minus the number leaving—fell to 204,000 in the year ending June 2025. This was a decline of 720,000 over the previous two years, from a peak of over 900,000. The decline was driven primarily by a 662,000 drop in non-EU net migration, although small declines in EU and British net migration also contributed.
EU net migration was negative, estimated at -70,000 in the year ending June 2025. Most EU migration involved people with EUSS status who originally arrived with free movement rights before Brexit. British net migration was also negative, at -109,000. British net emigration increased in 2022 and 2023 but was largely stable over the past year. These negative figures brought the overall total down, despite non-EU net migration of 383,000, which is roughly double the levels seen shortly before Brexit in 2018 and 2019.
Among non-EU migrants, the decrease in net migration was driven by work and study migration, which declined by 70% and 62% respectively in the same two-year period. Study dependants saw the sharpest decrease: net migration of people arriving in this visa category was 123,000 in the year ending June 2023, but was negative by the year ending June 2025, with 13,000 more people leaving than arriving. This follows restrictions on students’ right to bring family in 2024.
The only major migration category where net migration did not decrease was asylum. Long-term immigration of asylum seekers was 96,000 in the year ending June 2025, making up 11% of all immigration—double the 5% share in 2019. Relatively few asylum migrants emigrate, so net migration of people seeking asylum was 90,000 in the same period, equivalent 44% of total net migration. This share was also around double the pre-Brexit figure of 22% in 2019.
Home Office figures also published today showed that the number of work visa grants continued to decline after June, following the closure of the Health and Care visa route to overseas recruitment of care workers in July 2025. In the year ending September 2025, 133,000 Skilled Worker visas were granted (including health and care), down 57% compared to the same period a year earlier (308,000).
Dr Madeleine Sumption, Director of the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford, said “While net migration has returned to pre-Brexit levels, the composition is now quite different: non-EU net migration is still much larger than it was pre-Brexit, EU much lower, and a higher share of migrants are coming through the asylum system.”
“Net migration has fallen substantially, but this will not necessarily be sustained long term. In particular, negative net migration of EU citizens who arrived before Brexit is currently still subtracting quite a lot from the figures, and this won’t go on forever.”
Dr Ben Brindle, researcher at the Migration Observatory, said: “The economic impacts of changes in migration depend on who is migrating, not just how many. Much of the decline in net migration is likely to have small impacts because it results from groups like care workers and family members of students, who fall in the middle of the spectrum: not the groups with the most positive or the most negative economic impacts. However, it does seem that the composition of migration has become less favourable from an economic perspective, with fewer people getting skilled worker visas and a higher share of refugees, who often need a lot of support.”
Following a year of intense scrutiny of asylum accommodation, today’s figures show that the Home Office has reduced the backlog of asylum seekers waiting for an initial decision from around 119,000 on entering government to 81,000 at the end of September 2025. This is despite continued high numbers of asylum applications: 110,000 in the year to 30 September, the highest on record in any one-year period since comparable records began in 1979. However, the new backlog that has emerged in the appeals system meant that the Government failed to make progress towards its pledge to end the use of asylum hotels. The number of asylum seekers in hotels increased to 36,000 at the end of September 2025, 13% higher than at the end of June. The total number of people receiving asylum support also increased by 5%, to 112,000 people.
Dr Peter Walsh, Senior Researcher at the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford, said: “While the government has managed to reduce the main asylum backlog significantly, today’s data show just how hard it is to relieve pressure on the asylum system when applications remain high, and the appeals backlog continues to grow.
“Last week, the government proposed a series of changes to the asylum system, including plans to restrict asylum support to certain asylum seekers and reorganise the appeals system in the hope of receiving faster final decisions. The impacts of these measures are very hard to predict, and in any case it will take some time for them to work their way through the system”.
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