Accredited official statistics

Why do people come to the UK? Work

Published 28 November 2024

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This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/immigration-system-statistics-year-ending-september-2024/why-do-people-come-to-the-uk-work

Back to ‘Immigration system statistics, year ending September 2024’ contents page.

Data relates to the year ending September 2024 and all comparisons are with the year ending September 2023 (unless indicated otherwise).

Between 2009 and 2019 the number of work visas granted were relatively stable. The COVID-19 pandemic restricted global travel throughout 2020 and parts of 2021, leading to a temporary fall in visa grants. Changes to the Immigration System following the UK’s departure from the EU which ended free movement for many EEA nationals (excluding those with status on the EU Settlement Scheme or other indefinite leave to remain). These various changes led to a change in the numbers and types of people coming to the UK for work.

There were 241,719 visas granted to main applicants in all work categories in the year ending September 2024, 28% fewer than the previous year, but 76% higher than 2019.

Since the beginning of 2021, there has been an increase in the number of work visas granted, with ‘Health and Care Worker’ visa numbers in particular growing sharply between year ending September 2022 and year ending September 2023, following the expansion of the route in February 2022 to boost the social care workforce. The growth in this route was accompanied by a large increase in the number of work-related dependant visas granted, with the majority of all work dependants (62%) over the latest 3 years being on the ‘Health and Care Worker’ visa.

In December 2023, the Home Office announced a set of policy changes, impacting who can apply for work visas, which came into effect at various points in 2024. The number of ‘Health and Care Worker’ visas issued to main applicants has fallen in the last 6 months – down 84% between April and September 2024 compared with the same period in 2023. Dependant visas have also fallen by 74% over the same period. Home Office has published additional statistics on monthly changes in key visa types since March 2024, available here.

Other skilled work routes and ‘Temporary Worker’ visas also increased from 2021, but their numbers have levelled off in the last 2 years.

Figure 1: Work visas granted to main applicants between the year ending September 2014 and the year ending September 2024

Source:Entry clearance visa applications and outcomes – Vis_D02

Notes:

  1. The ‘Worker’ visa line divides after 2021 (denoted by the dashed lines), when the ‘Health and Care’ visa was introduced alongside other skilled work. Prior to this, the ‘Worker’ category is comprised of visas under the previous ‘Tier 2’ points-based system.

1.1 Health and Care Workers, other skilled work routes, and their family members

There were 50,591 ‘Health and Care Worker’ visas granted to main applicants in the year ending September 2024, a 65% decrease compared to the previous year.

The number of ‘Health and Care Worker’ visas increased by 114,023 between 2021 and 2023 (as shown in Figure 1) peaking at 145,823 in the year ending December 2023. However, the number of care workers and home carers issued visas have fallen since the latter part of 2023. The fall towards the end of 2023 is likely due to more scrutiny applied by the Home Office to employers in the health and social care sector, and compliance activity taken against employers of migrant workers, as well as the recent policy measures affecting care workers introduced in March and April of this year. The number of grants for ‘Health and Care Worker’ main applicants fell by 84% to 13,131 grants between April and September 2024, compared with the same period in 2023 when there were 80,541 grants.

The number of grants to main applicants on other routes in the ‘Worker’ category (which includes ‘Skilled Worker’ visas) has increased by 67% since the year ending September 2021, but in the latest year has fallen by 3%.

Figure 2: Visas granted to dependants of work visa holders by visa route, between the year ending September 2020 and the year ending September 2024

Source: Entry clearance visa applications and outcomes – Vis_D02

Notes:

  1. The ‘Skilled Worker’ and ‘Health and Care Worker’ visas were introduced in 2020 and together replaced the ‘Tier 2 – General’ visa.

Figure 2 shows that the introduction of the ‘Health and Care’ and ‘Skilled Worker’ routes contributed to a large overall increase in visas issued to work dependants, from 36,664 in year ending September 2020 to 249,080 in year ending September 2023, to 211,337 in the year ending September 2024. ‘Health and Care’ dependants alone accounting for 62% of all work dependants in the latest year.

In the year ending September 2024, there was an average of more than 2 dependants per main applicant on the ‘Health and Care’ route. By contrast, those on ‘Skilled Worker’ visas brought an average of less than one dependant per main applicant. However, the number of ‘Health and Care’ dependants between April and September 2024 was 74% lower than the same 6 months in 2023. This decrease in grants to dependents is likely influenced by falls in grants to main applicants since the third quarter of 2023, and the recent policy change for care worker dependants.

1.2 Temporary workers

The number of ‘Temporary Worker’ visas granted to main applicants in the year ending September 2024 was 77,719. This is 7% higher than the previous year but almost double (+89%) the number in the year ending December 2019, largely due to the growth in the ‘Seasonal Worker’ visa route.

In the year ending September 2024, 45% of ‘Temporary Worker’ visas granted to main applicants were for seasonal work, 31% were under the ‘Youth Mobility Scheme’ and the remaining 24% were for other temporary work.

Figure 3: ‘Temporary Worker’ visas granted to main applicants between the year ending September 2020 and the year September 2024

Source: Entry clearance visa applications and outcomes – Vis_D02

Figure 3 shows grants of ‘Seasonal Worker’ visas in the year ending September 2024 increased by 14% to 34,755 compared with the previous year. The ‘Seasonal Worker’ route was launched in March 2019 with the number of visas that could be granted limited to 2,500 per year. The annual quota has since increased to 47,000 for 2024, which partly explains the overall growth in ‘Temporary Worker’ visas issued over the last few years.

Whilst the number of ‘Seasonal Worker’ visas have grown in the latest year, the nationalities of applicants have also changed. Central Asian nationalities (such as Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan) have together grown by 29% to 26,883 and represent three-quarters (77%) of grants in the latest year. Ukrainian nationals, by contrast, have fallen by 65% to 912 seasonal worker visas following the start of the war in Ukraine and the launch of the Ukraine visa schemes in 2022.

The number of ‘Youth Mobility Scheme’ visas issued increased by 4% to 24,151 in the year ending September 2024 compared with the previous year. The rise in Youth Mobility since the year ending September 2021 reflect a bounce-back for the scheme which was heavily impacted by travel restrictions during the pandemic, but recent numbers also include the addition of the India Young Professionals Scheme, which held its first ballot in February 2023. This route has a quota of 3,000 places each year, and in the year ending September 2024 there were 1,940 grants to Indian nationals under this scheme.

In the year ending September 2024, grants of an extension into work routes for main applicants increased by 35% compared to the previous year, primarily driven by extensions in the ‘Graduate’, ‘Health and Care Worker’ and ‘Skilled Worker’ routes.

A total of 159,218 extensions into the Graduate route were granted to main applicants in the year ending September 2024, 52% higher than the previous year (104,501), reflecting A consistent annual growth since the route’s introduction in July 2021. Indian nationals represented the largest group of students granted leave to remain on the Graduate route (72,570), representing almost half (46%) of the total in the latest year.

The 116,921 extensions into the ‘Health and Care’ route that were granted in the year ending September 2024 reflect the UK’s ongoing efforts to address shortages in health and social care sector. Further policy amendments in 2021 and 2022 added more roles, including those in social care, to fill job shortages, which were worsened by the pandemic. These policy adjustments have driven the steady increase in extension numbers.

There were 100,706 Skilled Worker extensions granted to main applicants in the year ending September 2024. As of April 2024, the minimum salary threshold for the general Skilled Worker visa in the UK rose, from £26,200 to £38,700. This increase could impact future applications and eligibility for extensions.

Analysis from the Migrant journey: 2023 report shows that of those arriving on work routes in 2018, 38% still held valid or indefinite leave 5 years later. This suggests most workers do not remain in the UK indefinitely, although this percentage has increased, from 23% for workers arriving in 2012.

The proportion who remain and are granted indefinite leave varies by route, and is considerably higher in the ‘Investor, business development and talent’ visa category where 77% of main applicants held valid leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain after 5 years. ‘Temporary Workers’ by the nature of their visa are less likely to stay long term, needing to obtain a new type of visa to do so, and only 14% who arrived on a Temporary Worker visa still held leave 5 years later.

The Home Office publishes the number of ‘Skilled Worker’ and ‘Health and Care Worker’ visa applications by month in the Monthly monitoring of entry clearance visa applications publication.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) publish long-term international migration estimates. These are statistics under development that estimate the number of people immigrating to and emigrating from the UK for 12 months or more.

According to the Labour Force Survey statistics from July to September 2024, published in the ONS Labour market overview, UK: November 2024 release, the number of non-UK nationals working in the UK has increased by 260,000 (+6%) in the past year to 4.63 million. There were an estimated 2.55 million non-EU nationals working in the UK, 416,000 higher (+20%) than a year earlier and an estimated 2.09 million EU nationals working in the UK, 156,000 lower (-7%) than a year earlier.

3.1 Sponsorship licensing for work and study

At the end of September 2024, there were 108,293 organisations and institutions registered as licensed sponsors for work and study.

Home Office management information indicates that there were 8,299 decisions on applications for sponsor licences between July to September 2024, 24% less than in July to September 2023 (10,891). Of these, 5,054 licenses were granted, and 3,245 applications were not granted (including both applications withdrawn and those rejected).

This data also shows that there were 47,897 decisions made in the year ending September 2024, compared to 36,804 in the year ending September 2023. Of these decisions, 34,765 licences were granted (22% higher than the year before), and 13,132 were not granted (including both applications withdrawn and those rejected).

4. About these statistics

The statistics in this section provide an indication of the number of people who have an intention to enter the UK for work reasons. Further information and definitions can be found in the user guide.

Entry clearance visas allow an individual to enter and stay in the UK within the period for which the visa is valid. Data in this section refers to the number of Entry clearance visas granted for work reasons within the period. If an individual was granted a visa more than once in a given period, this has been counted as multiple grants in the statistics.

Year-on-year comparisons of the number of decisions can be affected by quarterly fluctuations in the data. These fluctuations can be examined in the quarterly data in the published tables. Year ending comparisons will also include impacts resulting from the travel restrictions put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Extensions of temporary stay in the UK relate to individuals inside the UK extending or changing the status of their right to stay in the UK. An individual is required to apply for an extension or change in status before their existing permission to enter or stay in the UK expires.

The statistics in this chapter show the number of grants and refusals on applications for extension of temporary stay in the UK. One individual may have made multiple applications for an extension, so may account for multiple decisions. Data in this section includes dependants and takes account of the outcomes of reconsiderations and appeals.

Before 2023, extensions under the Skilled Worker and Skilled Worker Health and Care visas were not separated into specific subcategories; instead, they were reported as a single, combined figure. Since 2023, however, these extensions have been classified under distinct categories: either Skilled Worker or Skilled Worker Health and Care.

Publication of the ‘Sponsored work visas by occupation and industry’ dataset was temporarily paused due to the Home Office adopting the latest Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) framework; a common classification of jobs in the UK overseen by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). We have resumed publication of this dataset, with the latest available data currently up to the end of September 2024. The new dataset uses the SOC 2020 framework and in order to provide a comparable time series, is primarily based on modeled estimates by converting occupations under the 2010 framework to occupations under the 2020 framework.

The new data is not broken down by nationality or occupation at the unit group (4 digit) level, as estimates are not reliable at this level of granularity. The previous published dataset, which contains data up to 2024 Q1, and uses the SOC 2010 framework, will continue to be available on GOV.UK.

5. Data tables

Data on immigration for work can be found in the following tables:

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