Immigration for work for non-EU nationals has fallen by a half, new figures from the Office for National Statistics reveal.
The number of people immigrating minus the number of people emigrating is provisionally estimated to be 431,000 in the year ending December 2024, compared with 860,000 in the year ending December 2023.
There have also been 17% fewer applications to study in the UK from would-be immigrants, the figures show, while total long-term immigration was a third down on the previous year, with 948,000 coming to the UK.
Meanwhile, 517,000 people left the UK, an increase of 11% on the previous year.
Immigration white paper
Director of population statistics at the ONS Mary Gregory said: “Our provisional estimates show net migration has almost halved compared with the previous year, driven by falling numbers of people coming to work and study, particularly student dependants.
“This follows policy changes brought in restricting visa applications.
“There has also been an increase in emigration over the 12 months to December 2024, especially people leaving who originally came on study visas once pandemic travel restrictions to the UK were eased.”
The Migration Observatory, an independent research and analysis group based at Oxford university, responded to the new figures with a tweet that simply stated: “Blimey. Long-term net migration down by almost 50% to 431,000. Massive decline – we’ve expected this for a while.”
The fall in net migration is largely the result of measures introduced by the then Conservative government at the end of 2023, which were aimed at reducing immigration by about 300,000 a year. The measures included increasing salary thresholds, replacing the shortage occupation list, reforming work and study visas so that fewer dependents would arrive with students and requiring a higher level of English across all immigration routes.
Last week, the Starmer government announced fresh proposals in an immigration white paper, which ministers claimed would reduce reliance on overseas labour.
Dr Madeleine Sumption, director of the Migration Observatory, said the economic impact of this decline was not likely to be significant: “This record-breaking decline in net migration was possible primarily because numbers had previously been so high. UK migration patterns in 2023 were very unusual, with unexpectedly large numbers of visas for care workers, international students, and their family members. This made it easier for the government at that time to bring down the numbers.
“The economic impact of this decline is actually likely to be relatively small. That’s because the groups that have driven the decline, such as study and work dependants, are neither the highest skilled, highest-paid migrants who make substantial contributions to tax revenues, nor the most disadvantaged groups that require substantial support.”
The Migration Observatory said that in percentage terms the decline in net migration was 50%, comparable to the 49% decline seen between 2019 and 2020 during Covid-19 pandemic. The fall was bigger than in the year after the EU referendum, when EU migration fell sharply and non-EU migration had not yet started its rapid rise. From the year ending June 2016 to the year ending June 2017, net migration fell from 321,000 to 200,000 – a decline of 121,000 or 38%.
Researcher Dr Ben Brindle added further context: “Unless something surprising happens, net migration still has further to fall. The previous government’s restrictions are not yet fully visible in the data. And last week’s policy proposals should reduce migration further, though by a small amount. But these declines will not necessarily take us to particularly low levels, by historical standards”.
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