Up to 1.3 million immigrants have left the UK – the largest population fall since the Second World War – with coronavirus the likely cause, a study says.
In London alone, almost 700,000 foreign-born residents are believed to have moved out, leading to a potential 8 per cent shrinking of the size of the capital, it argues.
The study, by the government-funded Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence (ESCoE), draws a clear link with the devastation inflicted by the pandemic on sectors such as hospitality.
“It seems that much of the burden of job losses during the pandemic has fallen on non-UK workers and that has manifested itself in return migration, rather than unemployment,” the authors concluded. It rejected data published by the Office for National Statistics – finding a 500,000 drop, with employment of UK-born people in London rising – as “hardly plausible”.
With officials unable to collect data in the usual way at airports and other transport hubs because of the pandemic, the ONS has acknowledged severe difficulties in measuring migration numbers. The authors of the study, Michael O’Connor and Jonathan Portes, blamed those shortcomings on the difficulties in counting migration during the pandemic.
Mr Portes, professor of economics at King's College London, said Brexit might have had an impact “at the margin”, warning that effect might grow.
“The effects we describe here occur very specifically in 2020 Q1 to Q3, and are visible for both EU and non-EU migrants,” he tweeted.
But he added: “In 2021, interaction of Brexit, Covid-19, economic recovery, and new system is unpredictable.” The Independent.
Blogger: could be very good news if many of these are illegals - do remember that illegals would not have qualified for furlough payments.
Our islands are already hugely overcrowded. Should mean that unemployment should not be as desperate an issue as first thought and may well give significant opportunities to the London unemployed - from any and all origins.
