UK reliance on overseas workers rose since Brexit, census shows
- Hospitality, logistics and the National Health Service rely on staff from overseas
- Census figures cast doubt on the UK government’s effort to reduce migration
Swathes of the UK economy including health, warehousing and packing are being propped up by migrant workers – casting doubt on the prudence of the Conservative Party’s promise to tighten immigration policy.
Almost half of specialist medical practitioners, two-in-five generalist doctors and more than a quarter of mental health nurses were born outside the UK, according to census data collected in 2021 and released by the Office for National Statistics on Tuesday.
The industry with the largest proportion of non-UK workers was packers, bottlers, canners and fillers, at 60.7 per cent.
The figures give a sense of the challenge facing Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s government as it tries to make good on commitments to voters to slash immigration while also keeping the economy supplied with workers.
Britain alone in the Group of Seven has yet to recover its pre-pandemic level of output, and a shortage of people to take jobs is part of the problem.
On census day in March 2021, there were 48.6 million residents in England and Wales aged 16 and over. Of those, 80.9 per cent were born in the UK and 19.1 per cent were born abroad. That’s up from 13 per cent the last census in 2011, before Britain voted to leave the European Union.