Figures published today1 show that there were nearly 300,000 more people in employment in the UK in the third quarter of 2010 compared to the same period in 2009. However, nearly half of these jobs went to foreign nationals, including 98,000 extra workers from the new East European members of the EU. There were also an extra 38,000 Indians and 27,000 from countries of Africa (excluding South Africa).
The immigration figures, which only go up to December 20092, showed that net immigration from Eastern Europe in that year was only 16,000. This suggests, therefore, that there has been a significant inflow of East European workers in the summer of 2010. These workers will only add to net immigration if they stay for a year or more but it seems that economic conditions in Eastern Europe are, at least for the time being, encouraging further migration to Britain.
Commenting, Sir Andrew Green, Chairman Migrationwatch UK said, “These flows could stabilise over the length of a Parliament and we have not yet seen the effect of the rest of the EU 15 opening their labour markets to East Europeans in May this year but the huge increase in foreign workers at a time of high unemployment, including nearly one million young people, strengthens still further the case for tough immigration controls on workers from the rest of the world.
NOTES
1 Labour Market Statistics (table 8) http://www.statistics.gov.uk/pdfdir/lmsuk0111.pdf
2 LTIM data http://www.statistics.gov.uk/statbase/Product.asp?vlnk=15053
