UK still a strong draw for foreign job-seekers, study shows

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain is the most attractive large European economy for foreign job-seekers, despite new post-Brexit immigration restrictions, a study from recruitment website Indeed showed on Tuesday.

Indeed analysed more than 800 million cross-border job searches on its platform since 2019, and found Britain had Europe’s third-highest number of inbound job searches relative to resident workers looking for foreign jobs, after Luxembourg and Switzerland.

“Despite the double-header of Brexit and the pandemic it continues to be one of the most attractive destinations for international workers and is increasingly popular with job-seekers outside of Europe,” Indeed’s head of EMEA research, Pawel Adrjan, said.

Britain tightened immigration rules for new EU workers at the end of 2020, who now generally need the same work visas as those from the rest of the world.

But it has slightly relaxed eligibility requirements for work visas for higher-paid jobs and areas with particular shortages such as healthcare.

Official labour market data showed the number of EU workers in Britain in the first quarter of 2022 had fallen by 188,000 over the past two years to 2.227 million, while the number of non-EU workers rose by 220,000 to 1.691 million.

Indeed’s data showed Britain’s overall attractiveness to foreign workers had risen since 2019.

(Reporting by David Milliken, editing by Andy Bruce)