Migrants Taking Four in Five New Jobs

Four in five new jobs created in Britain since 2014 were taken by migrants while the number of British people on out-of-work benefits increased by 2.3 million, according to a report from the Centre for Social Justice. The Telegraph has the story.

Analysis by the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) found that the number of jobs recorded through the PAYE tax system increased by about 3.7 million from 2014 to the end of last year.

However, 734,000 of the new jobs were taken by British nationals, alongside 408,000 EU nationals and about 2.5 million non-EU nationals.

Most of the increase has come since 2020, the start of the ‘Boriswave’ of immigration, during which almost four million migrants were granted visas to work or study in the UK. According to the CSJ analysis, non-EU payroll positions rose by 2.1 million.

The research also showed that the number of largely British people receiving out-of-work benefits rose by 2.3 million over the same period. Annual spending on working-age benefits had risen by £50bn in real terms since 2019-20.

CSJ founder Sir Iain Duncan Smith said: “The report shows that this crisis extends beyond the benefit system. The truth is that successive governments have used welfare over decades to compensate parts of the country for economic failure rather than creating the conditions for prosperity.

“Compounding this, ministers have repeatedly pulled the easy lever of immigration rather than providing a better deal for left behind communities. Welfare reform, immigration and regional growth must now be treated as parts of the same challenge.”

The findings come after a year-long investigation by the CSJ into the rapidly increasing cost of welfare, and have been released in a 250-page report, State of Dependency, published on Tuesday.

The report is the successor to Sir Iain’s Breakdown Britain series, which provided the blueprint for the introduction of universal credit to act as a bridge from benefits to work.

It warns that successive governments have relied on low-skill immigration to fill jobs while millions of Britons have been “written off” by the welfare system. It says the UK has accepted unprecedented inflows of overseas labour while taxpayers have absorbed the growing cost of unemployment.

The shift has accelerated since the coronavirus pandemic, which the CSJ claims has distorted the jobs market. From January 2020 to December 2025, the number of payroll jobs held by Britons fell in nine of the UK’s 12 nations and regions, while those held by non-EU nationals increased in all of them.

Scotland recorded the largest fall in payroll jobs taken by Britons, down 53,000. It fell by 32,000 in the West Midlands, 31,700 in the South East, 29,400 in the East of England and 26,500 in London.

During the same period, the number of non-EU payroll jobs increased by 465,200 in London, 284,500 in the South East, 223,900 in the North West and 220,300 in the West Midlands.

The growth since 2020 has been concentrated in sectors such as social care, hospitality and retail that have traditionally provided routes into work for people outside the labour market.

Worth reading in full.