Britain Loses Its Luster for Job Seekers From Poland to Portugal
- Lower unemployment in Europe reduces the UK’s drawing power
- Polish community in Britain shrank since the 2016 Brexit vote
This article is for subscribers only.
It’s not just Brexit that’s dried up the flow of European Union workers the UK used to depend on. From Poland to Portugal, EU economies are generating more jobs and better wages than Britain.
For the UK, that means that arrivals from the EU of just over 150,000 last year were about half the level seen in 2019, according to figures released Thursday by the Office for National Statistics. That’s despite a record 606,000 for net migration into the UK in 2022.