The Express is wrong: Half of all new jobs have gone to UK citizens

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Media Integrity

Contrary to the Express's claims that 98% of new jobs go to "foreigners", 50.3% of the jobs created since 1997 have been taken by Britons - 1,375,000 positions.

Additional reporting by Left Foot Forward’s Nicola Smith, senior policy officer at the TUC

Today the Express (using data published by the Spectator) has claimed 98 per cent of jobs created in the UK since 1997 been taken by migrant workers, leading the Conservatives to state that:

“British workers [are] in a worse position than when Labour took office 13 years ago.”

This conclusion is significantly wrong.

An analysis (figures can be downloaded from the ONS) that considers all jobs in the UK, and is broken down by nationality not by country of birth, shows a very different picture – finding that 50.3 per cent of the jobs created since 1997 have been taken by UK nationals (around 1,375,000 positions), and that employment rates for UK nationals remain at the same level they were in 1997 – despite the sharpest global downturn since the 1920s.

In contrast, the analysis that has been used by the Spectator:

• Conflates “non-UK born” with “nationality” – there are many (around 1,432,000) non-UK born British nationals, excluding them from the analysis is to exclude five per cent of the UK labour force.

• Excludes UK workers over state pension age – a method that excludes 1,419,000 workers. There is no good reason for omitting this group – they are included in ONS’s widely reported analysis of total employment levels in the UK and comprise around five per cent of the workforce.

• Excludes public sector jobs – meaning that around 20 per cent of the jobs (public sector jobs excluding those in financial corporations) in the entire UK economy are discounted.

The proportion of people in the UK population who were born in other countries has been rising consistently since the 1950s – as new migrant communities settle and their children enter the labour market the proportion of non-UK born British nationals will continue to increase. And as the Home Office acknowledge, the UK has some specific skills shortages – which mean that while it is vital to continue to enable workers in the UK to build their skills, it is also economically sensible to enable non-UK nationals to work in the UK.

Since 1997, unemployment rates have reached some of their lowest levels for 30 years, and even after the recession they remain low relative to other recent downturns. Research has consistently shown that, overall, migration has increased the number of jobs in the UK and raised levels of pay (although the effects may be very small).

It is absolutely true that are important policy discussions to be had about how the next Government can continue to improve skill levels among workers in the UK (new rights to request time off to train are the most recent in a long line of Labour measures) and the role that strategic industrial strategy should play in increasing good quality private sector jobs. There is also more that can be done to support communities experiencing sudden large-scale change as a result of migration. But a sensible debate about immigration needs to deal with the facts, and should not distort figures to make political points.

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155 Responses to “The Express is wrong: Half of all new jobs have gone to UK citizens”

  1. nonnon

    RT @leftfootfwd: The Express is wrong: <i>Half</i> of all new jobs have gone to UK citizens http://is.gd/bk4u3

  2. jtangco

    RT @leftfootfwd: The Express is wrong: Half of all new jobs have gone to UK citizens, NOT 2% as they claim: http://is.gd/bk4u3

  3. Nicola Smith

    John 77 – For you, and any others who are not familiar with ONS spreadsheets, to view the data back to 1997 you have to click on the button at the top of the page which is labelled ‘view historical data’. If you have problems with this I suggest getting in touch with ONS. Also apologies – I quoted you the data from Q2 1997, but we used Q1 in the published analysis – which does give you the 1.375 figure.

    The reason we published this rebuttal was to show that the debate is far more complex than the Express story suggested – it is our view that sensitive debates need to be based on fact not on wilful misinterpretation of evidence. Your point about citizenship falls into the latter category – the presumption that anyone who became a citizen has taken a job away from someone who already has British nationality is wrong, as the evidence we link to in our analysis shows.

    Michael Fox – Even the 50.3 per cent is more complex than the headline figure suggests. While we have used ‘number of jobs’ as shorthand for ‘levels of employment’ the reality is that there is large turnover of jobs at any one point in time. As older people leave the labour market, younger people enter, even if the number of jobs were to remain the same. As the demographics of the UK population have changed, it is inevitable that levels of migrant workers are increasing, even if employment rates for migrant and non-migrant populations were to remain constant. And importantly there are, as we state further down in our post, not just a set number of jobs to go around. Jobs that are filled by migrant workers generate more jobs in other areas of the economy – if we didn’t have migrants we would likely have fewer jobs for non-migrants. There are also severe skills shortages in some areas of the UK labour force, and it makes sense to encourage migrant workers to fill them if the alternative is for posts to go unfilled. Evidence shows that migrant workers make a significant contribution to the UK economy, and debate around immigration needs to start from this basis.

  4. Sophie Bryce

    RT @leftfootfwd: The Express is wrong: Half of all new jobs have gone to UK citizens, NOT 2% as they claim: http://is.gd/bk4u3

  5. James Phillips

    RT @leftfootfwd: The Express is wrong: Half of all new jobs have gone to UK citizens, NOT 2% as they claim: http://is.gd/bk4u3

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