The good news for the Conservatives is that immigration is down. It looks as if the net migration figures will not be returning to the 745,000 measured in 2022 in the immediate future. Now the bad news: this decline isn’t so much thanks to a drop in small boat arrivals – although they did fall from 45,774 in 2022 to 29,437 in 2023. It is more to do with a sharp decline in the arrival of skilled workers, especially in the healthcare sector. In the first three months of 2024, the number of visas granted to skilled workers, health and social care workers and students fell to 139,100, from 184,000 in the same period of 2023.
The drop in health and social care workers coming to Britain has been especially precipitous, down from 14,300 in March 2023 to 2400 in March 2024. This could mark a return to normal following a large uplift in numbers arriving as the NHS struggled to recover from the pandemic in 2022 and 2023.
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