Jobs & Welfare - Main Points


The below summary was last updated July 2019

  • Immigration can have a negative impact on the employment prospects of UK young people.
  • It can also have a negative impact on the wages of the lowest-paid (although it can raise the wages of those on the highest pay).
  • Immigration into low paid work adds significantly to the working-age benefits bill and to rapid population growth / congestion with no assurance that tax revenue would meet the costs.
  • Working-age benefits to all migrants in 2015/16 cost an estimated £13.6 billion. EU migrants cost £4.7 bn (or £13 million per day) and the bill for non-EU migrants was £8.9 billion.
  • Why should the UK taxpayer continue to subsidise businesses so that they can employ foreign-born workers on low rates of pay?
  • The Migration Advisory Committee point to ‘the need to raise British human capital and lessen employer dependence on immigration’. Government and business should take heed.
  • Employers need to offer more and better skills training opportunities to UK workers.
  • Businesses should also do more to attract some of the four million UK-born people who are either looking for work or would like to work more hours (see our paper).
  • High levels of immigration may have had a negative effect on the availability of full time employment for the UK born and thus on their stability of employment and security of earnings.

Jobs & Welfare Research

Library

Over the 23 years that Migration Watch UK has been working in this field we have produced many papers.

View Jobs & Welfare Library