Net migration to the UK
hits all-time
high

2 December 2015

Whilst the government looks into different ways in which migration to the UK could be significantly reduced, net migration for the year ending June 2015 hits an all-time high.

Here we take a closer look at the UK immigration statistics from June 2014 – June 2015*, exploring the main reasons why people travelled to the UK during this time.

Net migration

Over the past year net migration to the UK reached 336,000. This is a dramatic increase of 82,000 on the previous year and continues to digress ever further from the government’s annual migration target of 100,000.

Employers

There are now 29,579 UK organisations listed as registered sponsors of Tier 2 migrant employees. This is almost 2% fewer than this time last year and is perhaps a direct result of the Home Office clampdown on sponsor compliance.

Work

294,000 people immigrated to the UK for work purposes. This is a significant rise of 18% from last year’s figure of 241,000 and is overwhelmingly made up of EU citizens (58%). The figures show that most work visas went to applicants working in the professional, information, communication, financial, scientific and technical sectors.

Study

192,000 people came to the UK to study. This is an increase of only 17,000 from last year and an overwhelming majority (71%) of these migrants came from outside the EU. Chinese nationals made up the majority of non-EU student numbers, closely followed by US and Indian nationals.

Visitors

9.15 million visit visas were granted in 2014 which is a 6 % increase on 2013. The geographic areas leading the visit visa tables are the US, and East Asia.

Family

36,724 family route visas were granted in the year ending September 2015. This is 6% more than during the year ending September 2014.

Settlement

98,506 people were awarded the right to remain in the UK on a permanent basis over the year ending September 2015. This is a drop of 12% on the previous year’s figures.

EU Migration

Around 265,000 EU citizens immigrated to the UK this year and around 162,000 of these came for work purposes; a significant rise of 16% in EU migration on last year’s figures.

All data presented here is as published by the Office for National Statistics and relates to the year ending June 2015, unless otherwise stated.

*Long-term migration is considered to be any stay longer than 12 months.

Share story