1 in 5 unemployed are immigrants

IMMIGRANTS account for one in five unemployed people, official estimates showed yesterday.

But the total level of unemployment among migrants disguises a gulf between workers from Europe and those from the rest of the world.

As it was revealed that the number of European workers coming into Britain has continued to soar despite last year’s Brexit vote, it emerged that EU workers are less likely to be unemployed than British-born people.

But the breakdown, from the Office for National Statistics, also showed that migrants from outside the EU have unemployment rates almost 50 per cent higher than those among British-born workers.

The figures showed that 317,000 who were not born in Britain were on the unemployment rolls and looking for work from April to June. They made up 21.7 per cent of the unemployment total of 1,457,000. However, 219,000 – 15 per cent of the total – were migrants from outside Europe. Some 98,000 EU-born workers were unemployed, making up 6.7 per cent of the total.

The estimates said that 4.2 per cent of British-born people were on unemployment rolls, 4 per cent of EU-born workers were on them, but 6.2 per cent of migrant workers from outside Europe were unemployed.

Meanwhile ONS figures showed there were 126,000 more EU workers since the referendum, despite official claims that Eastern Europeans have been ‘going home’.

In all a record 2.37million Europeans were in employment here in the three months from April to June. Among them were nearly a million Poles and migrants from the seven other countries that joined the EU in 2004. The estimates also showed workers from Romania and Bulgaria – the countries whose nationals were given the right to work freely in Britain at the start of 2014 – keep arriving in growing numbers. Since the April to June period last year, which ended with the Brexit vote, the number of Romanians and Bulgarians in work has risen by 72,000. They outnumbered workers born in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa put together. There were 362,000 Romanian and Bulgarian-born workers between April and June this year, against 351,000 born in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.

In June a widely publicised survey predicted more than half of skilled EU workers would quit Britain before Brexit. Lord Green, chairman of Migration Watch, said: ‘Despite all the scare stories of an exodus of EU workers, we have seen a continued massive inflow from Romania and Bulgaria.’

It comes as unemployment dropped to its lowest level since 1975 amid signs the pay squeeze is coming to an end. The rate hit a 42-year low of 4.4 per cent in the three months to June. A total of 1.5million were out of work and looking for a job – 157,000 fewer than in the same period last year.

The pound’s drop in value has led to rising prices, outstripping salary growth. But wage growth is now 2.1 per cent a year.

‘Continued massive inflow’