Rapid growth in the migrant workforce after Brexit was driven primarily by dependent visas for family members of students and workers and other migration routes not directly designed to fill vacancies in the labour market—according to new analysis by the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford.
This means that work visa policies used by successive governments to shape migration’s role in the labour market only affect a minority of working migrants, the Observatory’s new “Migration, vacancies and labour market skills” briefing shows.
The report shows that main applicants on long-term work visas appear to have driven the growth in the migrant workforce in graduate-heavy industries like finance and IT. In many other industries—such as construction and retail, for example—workers who were not main applicants on work visas drove the growth.
Dr Ben Brindle, a researcher at the Migration Observatory and co-author of the report, said: “Debates about migration in the labour market tend to focus on work visas, but this is missing most of the picture. The UK is not unusual in this respect: high shares of migrants in most countries come through family routes. But it does mean that tweaks to visa policy—especially for middle-skilled jobs where many workers come through other routes—are not the main factor driving migration’s impacts. For example, work visas for technicians and other middle-skilled roles that the government currently prioritises because they are crucial to the Industrial Strategy made up only around 1% of new hires in those roles from 2022-2024, lower than in other mid- and high-skilled roles.”
The briefing reviews the evidence on how skills policy affects migration, and vice versa. The Labour government has committed to linking these two policy areas more closely, and will soon require employers recruiting technicians and other middle-skilled workers from overseas to be in an industry with an approved workforce plan. The report identifies a series of challenges linking skills and immigration policy, most notably:
- Increasing the domestically trained workforce does not automatically lead to lower migration—employers may simply increase the amount of goods and services they produce.
- Even among work migrants, skill shortages are not the only driver of migration. In some cases, poor pay and conditions make it hard to recruit local workers; and the UK remains an attractive destination for migrants regardless of any skill shortage.
- It is difficult to create effective incentives in the immigration system that explicitly encourage employers to invest in domestic training.
- Most migrant workers are not main applicants on the work visas designed to create these incentives, as noted above.
The report also interrogates whether the UK needs increased migration to meet its house building objectives, which industry bodies believe will require additional construction workers.
Dr Madeleine Sumption, Director of the Migration Observatory and co-author of the report said: “Around 85% of construction workers were born in the UK, so domestic training and retention are more important for the workforce than migration in the long run. In theory, the government could rely on migration to increase the workforce in the short run, although construction faces a specific challenge: the widespread use of self-employed contractors and elevated risks of exploitation migration make this industry less suitable for employer-sponsored visas than many others.”
Daniel Sandford Smith, Director of Programmes, Gatsby Charitable Foundation, said: “As this report makes clear, the UK lacks the granular data needed to understand how migration and skills policy interact in technician and other middle-skilled roles. While work visa data is detailed, it only covers a minority of new entrants to the labour market – for most migrants, we do not have reliable information on occupation, skill level, or training.
“Administrative data provides insight into industries but not specific roles, and survey data – particularly since the pandemic – does not support robust analysis of occupational change. At the same time, training data is not linked to employee characteristics. Against major post-Brexit shifts in migration, this makes it difficult to assess whether policy is strengthening the domestic technician workforce or simply reshaping its composition.”
