One in five extra payroll jobs since 2014 went to British nationals, think tank says
The Centre for Social Justice says non-EU nationals accounted for about 2.5 million of the 3.7 million rise, as out-of-work benefit claims also grew.
Just one in five additional payroll jobs in Britain since 2014 went to British nationals, according to analysis by the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ).
The centre-right think tank published the findings on Tuesday 13th October in State of Dependency, the first report from its Welfare 2030 inquiry, which is chaired by former Work and Pensions Secretary Sir Iain Duncan Smith.
The main points
- The CSJ says jobs recorded through PAYE rose by about 3.7 million between 2014 and December 2025.
- British nationals accounted for about 734,000 of the increase, EU nationals about 408,000 and non-EU nationals about 2.5 million, it says.
- Non-EU payroll jobs rose by about 2.1 million since 2020, the report says. Over the same period, the number of people on out-of-work benefits rose by 2.3 million.
- Between 2020 and 2025, payroll jobs held by British nationals fell in nine of the UK's 12 nations and regions, according to the CSJ. The largest fall was in Scotland, down 53,000.
- Health and social work accounted for 29 per cent of the rise in non-EU payroll jobs since 2020, the CSJ says.
The report says Britain has practised "a form of 'human quantitative easing', importing workers to expand headline GDP while allowing millions of people already here to drift away from the labour market".
Sir Iain said: "Ministers have repeatedly pulled the easy lever of immigration rather than providing a better deal for left behind communities."
The figures are net changes in the number of payroll jobs, not counts of individual new jobs. The CSJ says nationality is based on that recorded in HMRC data. Some coverage on social media described the jobs as "taken by migrants".
The Independent noted that British nationals still make up the large majority of payroll employees: about 25.6 million out of 32 million in December 2025, according to HMRC data.
Restore Britain's position
Restore Britain has not commented on the report. Its leader, Rupert Lowe, set out the party's policy on non-citizens on Monday 12th October. He said they "should be here on terms that serve Britain's interests", including "work", "contribution" and "self-sufficiency".
"We will not fund foreign nationals who are unable to financially support themselves or their families," he said.
Sources
Image: Jaggery, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons