EU work migration under the post-Brexit immigration system

This briefing outlines the evidence on EU citizens’ migration to the UK under the post-Brexit work visa system.

EU citizens make up low shares of people receiving work visas under the post-Brexit immigration system

Under the post-Brexit immigration system, there are four main legal avenues for EU nationals to immigrate to the UK: work visas, family visas, study visas, and people who do not require visas because they already have status under the EU Settlement Scheme or held indefinite leave to remain (ILR) before Brexit.

For new arrivals under the post-Brexit immigration system, by far the largest routes are for work (an average of 25,000 visas a year in 2021-24) and study (21,000 visas a year). Family is the smallest of the visa routes – an average of 1,800 family visas a year were issued to EU citizens between 2021 and 2024 (there were an additional 1,150 EUSS family permits a year).

In the four years after free movement ended in December 2020, EU citizens made up low shares of people granted work visas in the UK. In 2024, they received 25,500 work visas (excluding frontier worker permits, which are for people who do not live in the UK and are discussed further below). EU citizens made up 7% of the 369,000 work visa recipients in the UK that year.

This share of work visa recipients is low, given the scale of mobility from the EU-27 to the UK before Brexit. Even after EU migration had already fallen substantially post-referendum, an estimated 75,000 EU citizens moved to the UK for work reasons in the year ending March 2020, making up 43% of work migrants.

The low share of EU citizens in the work visa statistics is partly related to the fact that non-EU work migration was unusually high from 2021 to 2024. High non-EU migration followed policy liberalisations introduced in the post-Brexit immigration system, such as a visa route for care workers.

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The skilled worker route is the main visa EU citizens have used in the post-Brexit immigration system

The largest visa routes for non-UK citizen workers coming to the UK are the Skilled Worker route, which includes the Health and Care visa; intra-company transfers (now known as the Global Mobility Route); the Seasonal Workers Route; and the Youth Mobility Scheme (YMS). A small but growing number of people now come through the Global Talent route for ‘leaders and potential leaders’ in research, arts, culture and tech.

EU citizens have relatively low representation across all these categories. In 2024, around 53% of EU citizens receiving work visas were on the Skilled Worker route for employees (including dependants). EU citizens made up only 6% of people receiving these visas, and with particularly low numbers (1,200 or 1%) in the Health and Care category.

Figure 1

One category where EU citizens have higher representation is in the Government Authorised Exchange (GAE) visa (43% of all visas issued, and around 3,000 people). These are short-term visas of one to two years that allow people to come to the UK for internships or other training and exchange placements with specific sponsors. Home Office data do not provide breakdowns by GAE scheme, which makes it difficult to know which of the sub-categories are responsible for the relatively high share of EU citizen participants.

The number of work visas for EU citizens in the post-Brexit immigration system peaked in 2022 as the UK recovered from the pandemic. It declined by 12% between 2022 and 2024 (Figure 2), largely driven by decreases in Skilled Worker and Seasonal Worker visas. The decline in 2024 follows increases in salary thresholds in April that year.

Figure 2

Remarkably, EU citizens made up only 5% of the 35,600 Seasonal Worker visa recipients in 2024, even though seasonal work was done almost exclusively by EU citizens before Brexit. Instead, seasonal work scheme recruiters have primarily brought workers to the UK from Central Asia. In 2024, the principal countries of citizenship were Kyrgyzstan (18%), Uzbekistan (18%), Tajikistan (16%) and Kazakhstan (16%).

The shift from EU to non-EU countries across different visa categories is likely to reflect a combination of push and pull factors. On one hand, UK visas may be less attractive to EU workers than free movement was, due to higher fees and less extensive rights. On the other hand, EU workers now compete on the same terms with workers from non-EU countries, many of whom have been willing to tolerate difficult working conditions and low wages in industries such as horticulture and social care. The costs using the visa system may well be a deterrent for both workers and employers.[1] How much of this shift results from the preferences of EU citizens and how much from lower demand among employers is difficult to determine based on the evidence currently available.

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The nationality composition of EU work migration to the UK has shifted since Brexit

The nationality composition of EU work visa recipients is quite different from what the UK experienced before the end of free movement. Countries that were already EU Member States before 2004 now receive the large majority of EU citizens receiving work visas. In 2024, 59% of those receiving work visas were from just four countries: France, Germany, Italy and Spain. However, only 24% of EU passport holders who had arrived in the UK after 2010 and who were living in England and Wales at the time of the March 2021 Census were from those countries.

Compared to their share of the EU-born population in 2021, Romanian and Polish citizens received a much smaller share of EU work visas under the post-Brexit system (Figure 3).

Figure 3

This implies a shift in the composition of migration away from citizens of post-2003 Member States. The change likely results from the fact that higher shares of citizens of these Member States have traditionally worked in jobs that are now ineligible for UK work visas. It is also possible that increased costs and bureaucracy have disproportionately affected citizens from certain countries.

The low share of EU citizens from Member States that joined the EU from 2004 onwards is consistent with expectations ex ante, namely that the post-Brexit immigration system would have the largest impact on countries whose citizens were most strongly represented in low-wage work. The main long-term work visas (i.e. visas on the Skilled Worker Route) are only available for middle- and high-skilled jobs.

The only category where citizens of countries that joined the EU in or after 2004 received more work visas is seasonal workers. In 2024, 99% of the 1,800 EU citizens issued seasonal work visas were from post-2003 Member States, primarily Romania and Bulgaria. Absolute numbers in this category were small, however, as noted in the previous section.

Note that Irish citizens still benefit from full work and residence rights under the Common Travel Area and so do not require visas for work in the UK.

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Many EU citizens coming to the UK after Brexit held EU Settlement Scheme status

UK statistics do not currently tell us how many people enter and exit the UK with EUSS status. However, most EU citizens migrating to the UK in the first years of the post-Brexit immigration system are likely to be people who had lived here before.

According to the most recent ONS estimates, an average of 130,000 EU nationals a year immigrated to the UK long-term between June 2021 and June 2024. This is much higher than the roughly 55,000 residence visas a year issued to EU citizens in the same period (some of those visas will be short-term ones that do not count as long-term international migration). In theory, EUSS status holders returning to the UK are likely to explain the gap between visa grants and ONS immigration estimates. These overseas EUSS status holders may include people who lived in the UK for sustained periods before emigrating, as well as people who qualified for pre-settled status after a brief period of residence.

Regardless of its precise scale today, in theory, we should expect that migration to and from the UK among EUSS status holders will decline over time. This cohort is time-limited, and people are expected to become more tied to particular locations as time passes.

Note that some people who spend long periods outside of the UK risk losing their EUSS residence status. The data do not tell us precisely how many could be in this situation, but it is clear that there is substantial movement of EU citizens in and out of the UK, often for long periods (i.e. more than a year).

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Short-term migration remains a major data gap

One major gap in the statistics on UK migration concerns short-term work-related migrants. For example, we have almost no data on people who come as business visitors, freelancers, service suppliers and other short-term workers moving between the UK and EU branches of the same company. It is likely that this type of movement was extensive under free movement and that it has been affected by visa requirements, but unfortunately, there is no systematic evidence on this phenomenon.

Footnotes

[1] These charges include initial application fees of up to £1,420, an immigration ‘skills charge’ of £1,000 per worker per year (i.e. up to £5,000 for a five-year stay), and an NHS charge of £1,035 per person per year, both for the main applicant and for any dependants. Over a five-year period, a long-term work visa stay of five years outside of the health and care sector would thus typically attract fees of around £11,000, excluding any legal costs, and significantly more if the worker is bringing family members with them.