Four in five new U.K. payroll jobs went to non-Britons, report finds

Foreign nationals accounted for roughly four-fifths of the net increase in payroll jobs recorded in the United Kingdom between 2014 and the end of 2025, according to a report from the Centre for Social Justice, a think tank founded by former Conservative Cabinet minister Sir Iain Duncan Smith.

The group’s analysis found that payroll jobs recorded through Britain’s PAYE tax system rose by about 3.7 million over that period. British nationals accounted for 734,000 of the increase. EU nationals held 408,000 of the new positions, and non-EU nationals held roughly 2.5 million. The figures measure the net change in recorded jobs by nationality, not who was hired for each position.

Most of the shift came after 2020. From January of that year, payroll jobs held by non-EU nationals rose by 2.1 million while those held by British nationals fell by 186,000, according to a separate release. Over the same period, the number of people receiving out-of-work benefits grew by about 2.3 million. The think tank presents the trends side by side and argues that successive governments favored imported labor over helping people already in Britain return to work. The figures show the trends occurred together; they do not on their own establish that one caused the other. British nationals’ payroll jobs fell in nine of the U.K.’s 12 nations and regions, with Scotland posting the steepest drop at 53,000.

The think tank said health and social work accounted for 29% of the growth in non-EU nationals on payrolls, followed by administrative services at 16 percent, accommodation and food services at 12%, and wholesale and retail at 10%.

About 6.7 million people in England, Wales and Scotland now receive at least one out-of-work benefit, roughly 1 in 6 working-age adults, the report said. Working-age benefit spending is set to reach 136.1 billion pounds in 2026-27, up 49.6 billion pounds in real terms since 2019-20. The report equates that increase to about 1,200 pounds per income taxpayer.

The think tank also estimated that about 1.4 million foreign nationals receive working-age benefits, at a cost of roughly 14.3 billion pounds, a figure it projects will rise to 16.3 billion pounds by the end of the decade. Drawing on government administrative data and the Family Resources Survey, it calculated that benefits, pensions and child-related support associated with foreign nationals cost about 23 billion pounds in 2025. The report also noted that work-related dependant visa grants climbed from about 55,000 in 2019 to roughly 290,000 in the year ending March 2024.

The report ties the trend to the so-called Boriswave of post-pandemic immigration under then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson, arguing it was used to hold down wages that policymakers feared were feeding inflation. It cites an October 2025 Telegraph podcast interview in which Mr. Johnson said the Treasury believed worker shortages were partly driving inflation and that “there had to be a fix for that,” according to a transcript published by Breitbart News. In the same interview, he said the government did not set out to produce the surge in arrivals and lacked real-time figures on how many people were coming in. The report calls the approach a form of “human quantitative easing,” importing workers to expand headline economic output while millions of people already in Britain drift away from the labor market.

Mr. Duncan Smith, who chairs the group’s Welfare 2030 inquiry, said ministers have “repeatedly pulled the easy lever of immigration” instead of investing in left-behind communities.

Richard Tice, deputy leader of Reform UK, said the findings were a “damning indictment” of past Labour and Conservative governments. He pledged that his party would halt mass immigration and move British workers from welfare into jobs.

A government spokesperson said the vast majority of the country’s workforce is made up of U.K. nationals. The spokesperson pointed to a new skills-based migration system, the Youth Guarantee, which the government says will create almost a million work opportunities for young people, and 3.5 billion pounds to help disabled people and those with long-term health conditions move closer to the labor market.

The analysis uses HM Revenue and Customs data on payrolled employments by nationality, and the think tank said its figures are rounded. The report is the first installment of the Welfare 2030 inquiry, with reform proposals to follow.