1 in 5 unemployed people in Britain are migrants – official data
One in five jobless people in the UK are migrants, representing a 5.3 percent overall unemployment rate among non-British natives, according to official figures. The majority of those unemployed are from outside the European Union.
A total of 317,000 migrants are unemployed in the UK, according to figures released by the Office of National Statistics (ONS) on Wednesday.
Of those, 98,000 are from within the European Union and 219,000 were born outside the bloc.
Those from outside the EU represent an unemployment rate of 6.2 percent, compared to four percent for migrants who were born inside the European Union.
The overall unemployment rate among migrants in the UK is 5.3 percent.
The figures also show that the number of Romanians and Bulgarians working in the UK has risen by one-third over the past year, to a record 362,000.
This means people from these two countries now make up one in six of all EU migrants living in Britain, helping to push the number of non-UK nationals from the European Union in Britain to 2.37 million.
Although the number of Romanian and Bulgarian workers rose, migrant workers from EU countries including France, Italy, Spain, and Portugal fell slightly from the same period last year.
Experts predict the UK could see a surge in migrant numbers before Britain officially leaves the EU in March 2019.
Overall unemployment in the UK has reached a new 42-year low of 4.4 percent, with an additional 338,000 people currently employed compared to last summer.
Employment Minister Damian Hinds hailed the numbers as “great news.”
“These statistics show that record levels of people are in work across the country and earning a wage, which is great news,” he said, according to the Independent.
The figures, released on Tuesday, represent the UK’s employment climate from April to June 2017.
Although up-to-date numbers are published four times a year, they are best compared to the same period in 2016 because they are “not seasonally adjusted,” according to the ONS.
