Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the impact of the levels of immigration in the last year on employment rates among UK-born workers.

The information requested falls under the remit of the UK Statistics Authority.

Please see the letter attached from the National Statistician and Chief Executive of the UK Statistics Authority.

Emma Rourke | Acting National Statistician

The Lord Davies of Gower

House of Lords

London

SW1A 0PW

16 July 2025

Dear Lord Davies of Gower,

As Acting National Statistician, I am responding to your Parliamentary Question asking what assessment has been made of the impact of the levels of immigration in the last year on employment rates among UK-born workers (HL9326).

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) estimates the employment rates of people born in the UK and people not born in the UK from the Labour Force Survey (LFS), which is a survey of people resident in households in the UK.

According to LFS estimates, the employment rate for people born in the UK for the three-month period January to March 2025 was 74.6%. This was 0.2 percentage points higher than the equivalent employment rate one year earlier. Meanwhile, the employment rate for people born outside of the UK increased by 1.7 percentage points to 76.6% over the same period.

As the LFS does not collect information on the length of time people born outside of the UK have been residents, it is not possible to provide estimates of the employment rate for recent immigrants.

The ongoing challenges with response rates, response levels and weighting approach mean that labour market statistics based on the LFS are subject to increased volatility and are considered ’official statistics in development’ until further review.

Yours sincerely,

Emma Rourke