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Total net migration has fallen dramatically to just 34,000 from an annual average of around 250,000 over the past decade, figures released by the Office for National Statistics on Thursday showed.
The Office for National Statistics said that Brexit partly explains this decline, which helps explain why companies are struggling to recruit workers, especially in sectors such as hospitality and retail, which relied heavily on foreign workers before the outbreak of the pandemic.
The pressure of rising wages and inflation means the Bank of England is likely to raise interest rates as early as next month.
The Office for National Statistics said that along with Covid-19, Brexit was a cause, but it was “difficult to separate the effects” between them. Britain officially left the European Union in January 2021.
Impact of the epidemic
The decline in net migration partly reflects restrictions on international travel to combat the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. Britain saw the last net migration of EU citizens 30 years ago, when 1,000 Europeans left at a time when the bloc was much smaller.
The release of the separate and more recent Census from the Office for National Statistics for the year ending June 2021 indicates a continuation of this trend. It is also estimated that the number of EU citizens living in Britain had fallen by 200,000 to 3.4 million by that point.
The decline in migration to the EU accelerated during the year to December 2020, with fewer Europeans coming to Britain and no EU citizens residing in the country leaving.
An estimated 130,000 citizens from outside the European Union came to Britain in 2020, including departures, but this number was sharply low compared to recent years, when net immigration to Britain from outside the European Union reached 277,000 in 2019.
Guy Lindop, director of the Center for International Migration at the Office for National Statistics, said: “While there was no evidence of a mass exodus from Britain in 2020, global travel restrictions meant that the movement of people was limited, and all data sources suggest that migration fell to its lowest level in years.” many”.
“These are our current best estimates of international migration during this period… but they are representative figures based on empirical research and subject to a high level of uncertainty,” he added.
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