Nigerians And Indians Took More Job In The UK Between 2019-2023

According to data from His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC), the countries with the largest increases in employment in the UK between 2019 and 2023 were India and Nigeria.

HMRC is the tax authority for the UK and is in charge of administering benefits and tax credit payments, as well as collecting direct and indirect taxes.

Neil O’Brien, a former government minister and member of parliament, requested the data through a Freedom of Information (FOI) request.

The data reveals a notable change in the employment landscape of the country, with employment among those from outside the EU increasing by 69% during the period.

Just 257,000 of the 1.481 million additional jobs in the UK were held by citizens of the United Kingdom; the remaining 1.465 million jobs were held by non-EU workers. Particularly, the biggest increases were recorded by citizens of Nigeria and India, where there were 279,000 and 488,000 additional jobs, respectively. Significant increases in employment were also seen in Ghana and Pakistan, with rises of 55,000 and 101,000, respectively.

“Within that non-EU total, the biggest growth in employments in absolute terms were among nationals of India (+488,000), Nigeria (+279,000), Pakistan (+101,000), and Ghana (+55,000),” O’Brien noted in his analysis of the report.

Non-EU citizens had 1.2 million more work prospects in the private sector, compared to just 29,000 more jobs for UK citizens. The survey did point out, meanwhile, that Indian and Nigerian citizens’ incomes have decreased in comparison to those of their UK counterparts.

Young people of working age from India and Nigeria used to make 15 and 10 percent more, respectively, than young people from the UK who were the same age, but since the pandemic, their earnings have decreased.

As per Ben Brindle, an economist at Oxford University’s Migration Observatory think tank, non-EU migrants are progressively filling jobs that EU workers held prior to Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic, as reported by the Daily Mail.

The information highlights how migration has a major impact on the job market in the UK, as the proportion of non-EU workers in the labour force is increasing.

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