A new net migration projections method developed by researchers at the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford and the London School of Economics shows that net migration is likely to fall from the current high levels even if the government makes no further policy changes, but probably not below pre-Brexit levels of around 250,000 to 350,000.
The new methodology and supporting analysis, published today by the Migration Observatory and LSE Centre for Economic Performance, explores how shifts in immigration levels due to economic or policy changes are expected to affect net migration in future. It also shows how different scenarios for migration patterns – such as how immigration of workers, students or refugees will change, and what share of each group will remain in the UK permanently – may affect net migration in the medium-term.
The analysis highlights that unusually high levels of immigration in the past two years are expected to lead to higher emigration between 2023 and 2025. This emigration is driven largely by international students, most of whom have stayed temporarily in the past. However, the high numbers of international students currently coming to the UK mean that even if only a small share remain in the UK permanently, this group still makes a meaningful contribution to net migration (22% of net migration in the report’s central scenario). Work visas nonetheless make up the largest contributor to net migration in the central scenario, at 48% of the total in the long term.
Smaller numbers of people entering from Ukraine and Hong Kong are also expected to contribute to lower net migration in the coming years.
Alan Manning, Professor of Economics at LSE and co-author of the report, said: “Nobody can predict exactly what will happen to net migration, but we can set out some realistic scenarios. And most plausible scenarios involve net migration falling in the coming years. But many different factors affect the outlook, including what share of international students switch to long-term work visas, whether work visa numbers continue to increase as sharply as they have done in the past few years, and what happens to asylum applications. The unpredictability means it’s very hard for policymakers to guarantee that they will deliver a specific level of net migration.”
The analysis suggests that—largely due to the substantial increase in work visas—pre-Brexit forecasts of lower net migration following the end of free movement from the EU are unlikely to be realized under current conditions. In particular, health and care visas have become a much larger contributor to net migration than in the past.
Madeleine Sumption, Director of the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford, said: “One of the striking findings is that if current trends continue, work visas look set to be the largest factor shaping overall net migration by some distance. Work-related migration has mostly been driven by health and care. So future migration patterns will be particularly sensitive to developments in that sector”.
In the year ending June 2023, the Home Office issued around 78,000 out-of-country visas to care and senior care workers, and just over 35,000 to doctors and nurses (although it is not known how many of these may have been short-term immigrants who are not counted in the ONS long-term migration estimates).
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