UK immigrants fill one in five low-skilled jobs

United Kingdom, 27th May: Nearly one out of every five workers on low-skilled jobs in the UK happens to be an immigrant, findings of recent analysis by the Office for National Statistics show.

The ONS(Office for National Statistics) analysis further reveals that in the span of last nine years, the number of UK-born people working in low-skilled jobs in the UK has gone down by almost half a million while the number of immigrants working in low-paid jobs in the UK has doubled in the same span of time.

Majority of immigrants in the UK work on low-paid jobs—The number of foreign-born people working in low-skilled or low-paid jobs in the UK has gone up by a whopping 123 percent since the year 2002 as nearly 367,000 immigrants joined the bandwagon of low-skilled jobs in the UK.

Currently, the number of foreign-born workers involved in low-paid jobs is said to be around 666,000. As compared to the number of foreign-born workers (9 percent) involved in low-skilled jobs in 2002, the percentage has gone up to 20.6 percent, the ONS data shows.

Eastern European migrants have a largest share in the low-paid jobs in the UK—The largest increase has been from Eastern European migrants hailing from A8 member nations that came under the EU in the year 2004. As per the figures, the number of immigrants, especially those from Baltic and Poland, working in low-skilled jobs in the UK went up to 239,000 in 2011 from 4,000 in the year 2002.

Apart from the Eastern European migrants, the number of low-skilled workers hailing from non-EU nations also registered a significant increase from 212,000 to 353,000, the figures show.

Currently, the total number of jobs in the UK under the low-skilled category is almost steady at 3.2 million.

Need for strict measures by the UK government—Seeing a continuous increase in the UK immigration levels, the UK government must admit failure of its immigration policies, stated Associate Director at the Institute for Public Policy Research, Matt Cavanagh.

The government needs to take drastic step to meet their chosen goals, he asserted, while referring to tightening up of rules for skilled workers or students hailing from non-EU.