News

The latest labour market overview from the ALP includes a number of interesting statistics, news and insights to inform your next hiring decisions.

The government has announced £12.4m of funding for the following projects to better understand barriers to getting into work:

• Impact of endometriosis on women’s participation and progression in the workforce
• Evaluate whether programmes to reduce type 2 diabetes and obesity improve people’s ability to join the labour market
• A new pilot to address barriers to work faced by those aged 18-24 living in supported housing
• Two HMRC projects to evaluate the impact of tax-free childcare in parent’s choices and women’s return to work after maternity leave
• DWP to trial employment support and rent incentives to move people out of work or on low earnings into work or onto higher earnings

The LSE (London School of Economics) study: Is the UK undergoing a “quiet quitting” revolution? found that there has been a decline in working hours post pandemic of 36 hours (4.5 days) a year compared to pre-pandemic levels.

This has impacted on the post pandemic UK recovery particularly amongst the younger generation. Given the 24.5 million UK full-time, full-year workers, “quiet quitting” equates to an estimated 55.1 million discretionary hours lost to the UK labour market each year between 2020 and 2022, 48 per cent of which are accounted for by Millennials.

UK Immigration Policy

The Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) has published its Review of the Shortage Occupation List and has written a letter to the Home Secretary and the Immigration Minister. The MAC are recommending that only 8 occupations remain on the UK-wide SOL and a further two on the Scotland only SOL. There are no RQF 1-2 occupations being recommended for inclusion in the SOL.

In addition, the MAC is recommending the removal of the going rate discount as it does not see the SOL as a sensible immigration solution for shortage issues in low wage sectors. They are also recommending that the SOL be re-named the Immigration Salary Discount List (ISDL). The MAC is planning their next review in Spring 2024.

The Migration Observatory’s latest briefing on UK Public Opinion toward Immigration: Overall attitudes and level of concern has found that overall views in the UK are divided with 52% thought the immigration numbers should be reduced, but there are fewer people (32%) saying that immigration was a bad or a very bad thing. British people make clear distinction between types of migrant with the highly skilled preferred to unskilled overall and the majority in favour of making immigration easier for health care workers.

The Migration Observatory has also published a report on Family Migration to the UK. It found that in 2022, 3.5 million people living in the UK had originally moved to join a British citizen or settled resident. People on family unification visas are more likely to settle long term in the UK than those on work or study visas. Since 2020, dependents of workers and students have significantly outnumbered family unifications migrants.