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The UK’s migrant workforce continued to grow strongly last year despite a broader slump in hiring, official data showed on Tuesday.
Payrolled employment of non-EU nationals increased by 238,100 or 6 per cent in the year to December 2025, analysis by HM Revenue & Customs showed, even as employment of UK nationals decreased by 335,200 or 1 per cent and of EU nationals by 74,200 or 3 per cent.
The increase is striking because it suggests employers have continued to hire both newly arrived migrants and those already living in Britain despite a weaker labour market overall and a government clampdown on new arrivals, raising salary thresholds for sponsored work visas and ending international recruitment in the low-paid social care sector.
Net migration to the UK fell to 204,000 in the year to July 2025, down from 649,000 in the previous year and in line with pre-Brexit norms, according to the latest official estimates. Home Office data on visa approvals suggests inflows have continued to decline.
Madeleine Sumption, director of Oxford university’s Migration Observatory, said higher employment of non-EU nationals was in line with the latest figures for arrivals in the UK, but could also point to “improving integration” among migrants who arrived in the past few years but were not working initially, such as Ukrainians, Hongkongers and refugees.
People who come to the UK through humanitarian or family visa routes are often less likely to be in work than the UK-born population initially but their employment rate and earning power tend to improve over time.
Employers in the care sector, who have been unable to recruit overseas since the government closed the previous visa route last year, have also been drawing on a pool of international students already in the UK. These students are able to work in any job for a limited period after they graduate before they need to move to a sponsored visa.
The data highlights existing concerns about the lack of jobs growth among the UK-born population, however. HMRC said employment of UK nationals had rebounded swiftly after the pandemic, returning to pre-Covid levels by the end of 2021, but decreased by 2 per cent over the following four years.
“This does not mean migrants are taking our jobs . . . but you can’t say Brits are doing great,” said Jonathan Portes, professor at King’s College London, adding that the figures reinforced worries over joblessness and ill health among young people.
The data also shows just how dramatically patterns of migration have changed as a result of Brexit. Employment of EU nationals fell by 187,600 or 7 per cent in 2020 and a further 202,800 or 8 per cent over the following five years. In contrast, employment of non-EU nationals increased by 2.1mn, almost doubling over the five years to December 2025.
The impact of this post-Brexit exodus has been clearest in London, where employment of EU nationals fell by 5 per cent in the last year alone. Younger EU nationals and those working in hospitality have also been more likely to leave than those in other sectors.