Research and analysis

Temporary Shortage List: Stage 2 report (accessible)

Published 23 July 2026

Final report, July 2026

Committee Foreword

This review fulfils a commission from the Home Secretary to advise on the introduction of the Temporary Shortage List (TSL), a policy instrument designed to give time-limited immigration access to selected middle-skilled occupations where access is deemed necessary to support delivery of the Industrial Strategy or critical infrastructure.

The policy marks a material change from the post-Brexit work visa system. Previously, many occupations below degree level could qualify for sponsored work routes based on broad skill level and salary. Under the framework set out in the Immigration White Paper and the Home Secretary’s commission, access for these occupations now depends on a more demanding series of tests. These include whether an occupation is crucial to the government’s priority sectors, whether there is evidence of shortage and whether there is a credible plan for employers to increase use of the domestic workforce.

This policy seeks to implement the government’s vision of connecting migration policy more directly to domestic skills policy, while still recognising that firms in key sectors may face genuine constraints in the short term.

Determining which occupations are potentially crucial to the Industrial Strategy or critical infrastructure was the most straightforward part of the review process, though not a purely mechanical one. In Stage 1 of our review, we used occupational employment in priority sectors as a quantitative starting point, supplemented by engagement with sector experts across government. This produced a group of 82 occupations to be reviewed in Stage 2, although some borderline cases remained as would be expected when broad occupational codes are used to represent complex labour markets. In one case we concluded that in practice the occupation was not actually supporting the relevant Industrial Strategy sectors and excluded it from our recommended TSL list for that reason.

As we have seen in previous Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) reviews, assessing shortage was more complicated. Shortages can be local, temporary, concentrated in specific job titles, or masked by imperfect data. Wage growth, vacancies, hours worked and employer evidence each provide useful information, but none is a decisive indicator of shortage on its own. We therefore followed the broad approach we have used in previous shortage reviews: combining quantitative indicators with qualitative evidence from employers, government departments, Devolved Nations, trade bodies and trade unions.

The Jobs Plan requirement is the largest departure from previous shortage-list processes. Government sector leads played a crucial role coordinating these plans, drawing on employer and stakeholder evidence. They did so within short timeframes and across sectors where responsibilities, incentives and delivery levers are distributed across many organisations. We would like to thank them for the scale of that effort.

To play their part in fulfilling the government’s ambition to more closely link migration and skills policy, Jobs Plans should not simply summarise the current state of each occupation. Instead, they should represent a credible plan to address drivers of shortage and utilise the domestic workforce more effectively than at present, improving the occupation’s outlook so that migration becomes less necessary in the long run. This was always likely to be challenging for some occupations, particularly in the first iteration of this process. For this first review, we have therefore taken a pragmatic approach, giving many occupations the benefit of the doubt where the evidence and plans were not yet as strong as we would expect in future. As a result, we have recommended more occupations for inclusion than we would expect to do in subsequent reviews, unless the quality of Jobs Plans improves.

The Labour Market Evidence Group (LMEG) has made a substantial contribution to the evidence base discussion for this review. Its members helped shape the evidence process, contributed sector and skills expertise, and commented on provisional recommendations. This productive engagement was welcomed. While the final recommendations remain the Committee’s own judgements, we outline these debates in the report to reflect the range of views considered.

Our recommendations are made on the assumption that the government’s priorities have not changed since they issued this commission in July 2025, and that it means what it says when it asks for a meaningful Jobs Plan in return for TSL access. If these priorities were to change, our recommendations might change also.

Under the current framework, we have recommended 28 occupations receive 18-month access to the TSL and none warrant full access through to the next TSL review which we expect to be in three years’ time. We consider these recommendations to be a proportionate application of the government’s criteria.

The 82 occupations in-scope for consideration as part of Stage 2 represented around 10,000 visas a year on average from 2022/23 to 2024/25. Those that we are recommending for the list represented around 4,000 visas a year. If our recommendations are accepted, we can therefore expect a relatively small reduction in migration, with limited impact on public finances, growth or business confidence. This reduction would come primarily from a small number of occupations where employers were sponsoring more workers, particularly a set of office-based jobs requiring relatively generic skills, such as ‘Marketing associate professionals’ and ‘Sales accounts and business development managers’. This is in the context of a substantially looser labour market compared to when the MAC last undertook a full review of shortage occupations in 2023.

For decision-makers, the central question is not whether every recommendation is free from risk. The question is whether the balance of risks is acceptable given the stated objectives of the policy. Our recommendations aim to balance these objectives, as stated in the commissioning letter, by supporting priority sectors where the evidence justifies temporary access, while making clear that continued access should depend on better evidence and demonstrable progress.

The engagement we had with sector lead departments, stakeholders and LMEG has strengthened this review and represents an important improvement in the shortage-list process. We expect to run the full exercise again in three years’ time, with a narrower review of updated actions when 18-month access expires. On the basis of the government’s current stated priorities, we would expect future recommendations to place greater weight on the quality of Jobs Plans and on clear evidence of progress in reducing reliance on migration.

Chapter 1: Introduction

1.1. Background to this review

Immigration White Paper

On 12 May 2025, the government published an Immigration White Paper (IWP) titled “Restoring Control over the Immigration System”, which outlined the government’s strategy for establishing an immigration system that fosters economic growth whilst also “ensuring it is properly controlled and is not used as an alternative to fixing problems here in the UK.” At the time of writing the IWP, net migration had reached a record high, with a big increase in overseas recruitment including lower-skilled workers with visas issued below degree-level, which the government said had led to “over recruitment from abroad and under training in the UK”. As part of implementing the IWP, several significant changes have been made to work visa rules, including increasing the skills threshold for the Skilled Worker (SW) route to graduate level.

This change means that only occupations assessed at Regulated Qualifications Framework (RQF) Level 6 (degree level) now have access to the SW route, whereas previously the skills threshold was set at RQF Level 3 (A level or equivalent). To ensure that some RQF 3-5 (mid-level) occupations can continue to use the visa system, the IWP also announced that the Immigration Salary List (ISL) would be replaced with a new Temporary Shortage List (TSL). The TSL is intended to provide time-limited access to the immigration system for RQF 3-5 occupations where there are long-term shortages and occupations which are deemed crucial to the government’s Industrial Strategy and the building of critical infrastructure. The IWP states that “the immigration system must be linked to skills and training requirements here in the UK, so that no industry is allowed to rely solely on immigration to fill its skills shortages.” In this context, access to the TSL is limited to occupations supported by clear workforce strategies, referred to in this review as ‘Jobs Plans’, which show how sectors will increase training and make greater use of the domestic workforce.

TSL Review Stage 1

On 2 July 2025, the Home Secretary commissioned us to advise on the creation of this new TSL. We were asked to advise on three key aspects:

• To recommend terms and conditions for the TSL visa, such as visa caps and visa lengths;
• To assess which RQF 3-5 occupations are “crucial to the delivery of the Industrial Strategy or critical infrastructure”; and
• To determine which of the occupations identified as crucial to the delivery of the Industrial Strategy or critical infrastructure should be included on the TSL; this was to include an assessment of labour shortages and sector Workforce Strategies to “maximise use of the domestic workforce.”

Stage 1 of this review was published on 9 October 2025 and answered the first and second of these points. Although the report did not make any formal recommendations on settlement, sponsorships, fees or caps, and instead set out considerations for the Home Office, it did make a range of policy recommendations relating to other terms and conditions of the TSL visa. These included:

• Occupations should be added to the TSL for three years, unless a shorter initial period is deemed appropriate where Jobs Plans were lacking in detail but could be improved quickly;
• TSL visa holders should be allowed to switch to higher-skilled (RQF 6+) roles in-country to encourage progression; and
• The option of nation-specific TSLs should be kept open as labour market conditions can vary across the UK, but a very strong rationale for inclusion would be required to outweigh operational and policy risks.

To address the Home Secretary’s second key ask, we undertook a multi-step process to identify occupations that are potentially crucial to delivering the Industrial Strategy or building critical infrastructure (the “prioritised sectors”). To do this, we first refined the list of occupations classified by the immigration system as RQF 3-5 to better reflect their skill levels. We then identified occupations within this group where at least half of the workforce is employed in the Industrial Strategy sectors or Foundational Industries. This quantitative analysis, combined with engagement with the Industrial Strategy Advisory Council (ISAC) and the government departments responsible for the prioritised sectors, identified 82 occupations that we considered potentially crucial to these sectors.

Salary Requirements Review

In December 2025, we outlined our recommended salary thresholds for the visa in our Review of Salary Requirements. We recommended that TSL occupation-specific thresholds should be set at the median of each eligible occupation’s full-time annual earnings distribution to balance the need to encourage domestic recruitment and investment in skills with the need to allow firms in growing sectors to recruit skills that are in shortage. We also highlighted that due to the nature of TSL occupations – being both in shortage and part of innovative and productive ‘growth-driving’ sectors – wages should be competitive.

To ensure migrants are paid a wage that affords a reasonable standard of living, we also recommended that the general threshold should be set at least as high as the 30th percentile of the UK’s full-time annual earnings distribution (£30,900 in 2025), on the assumption that the route does not lead to settlement in future. However, we suggested that the TSL should offer no salary discounts because it aims to incentivise the recruitment of more experienced workers rather than provide younger workers a path into the workforce.

This report presents Stage 2 of our TSL review, in which we seek to address the Home Secretary’s third ask by establishing which of the 82 occupations we deemed potentially crucial to the government’s priority sectors should be included in the TSL. Before we move on to the methods used to reach these conclusions, it is important to note the policy environment and labour market context in which our recommendations are made. The remainder of this chapter outlines these considerations.

1.2 Related policy developments

Following publication of Stage 1 of this review, there have been several policy developments which could impact the TSL and how it operates. Most notably, the government has consulted on reforms to settlement through an “earned settlement” model. Under these proposals, the standard qualifying period for settlement would increase to ten years, with some workers seeing either longer or shorter paths to settlement depending on their characteristics. The government response to this consultation is still pending. If the government decides that the TSL remains a route to settlement, this will affect our recommended general salary threshold.

Our initial recommendation assumed the route would not lead to settlement. Under that assumption, the salary required for the average TSL visa holder to be a net fiscal contributor over their time in the UK would be less than the level needed to support a reasonable standard of living. However, if the route does provide a pathway to settlement, visa holders would remain in the UK later into life, when they are likely to become more fiscally costly. This would raise the salary needed for them to be net fiscal contributors over their lifetime in the UK, meaning our recommended threshold would need to be revisited. At the time of writing, visas in TSL occupations do lead to settlement.

Finally, the IWP sets out reforms to strengthen checks on the study route and to reduce the standard length of the Graduate visa, for international students to stay and work in the UK from two years to 18 months. These two changes may affect the future student and graduate pipeline and in-country switching patterns.

1.3 Labour market context

The labour market picture is also relevant for our conclusions. Labour market conditions provide the environment in which recruitment decisions are made, and this wider context informs our understanding and assessment of shortage in Stage 2 of this review.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) states “a labour market is ‘tight’ if vacant jobs are plentiful and available workers are scarce.” We use labour market tightness as an indication of recruitment difficulty. A tighter labour market can mean employers find it more difficult to find workers as demand for labour is high, and supply of available labour is low; whilst the opposite is true in a looser labour market.

An indicator of labour market tightness is the number of vacancies per unemployed person. If the number of vacancies per unemployed person is increasing, this shows a tightening labour market as there are more unfilled jobs (vacancies) relative to the number of people looking for work (unemployed).

Figure 1.1 below highlights the number of vacancies per unemployed person over the past decade. Whilst seeing a slight increase between 2016 and 2018, prior to the coronavirus pandemic the number of vacancies per unemployed person stabilised around 0.6 before falling to 0.2 early in the coronavirus pandemic. Post-pandemic recovery saw the labour market significantly tighten, hitting a record high of 1.0 vacancies per unemployed person^{[footnote 1]} in 2022 and has gradually decreased since then.

Recent data indicates a substantially looser labour market, with 0.4 vacancies per unemployed person in January to March 2026, similar to the start of the 10-year period shown in Figure 1.1. This loosening since 2022 was driven by both a reduction in volume of vacancies and an increase in the volume of unemployed people, with vacancies falling from around 1.3 million in January to March 2022 to 0.7 million in January to March 2026 and the volume of unemployed people increasing from around 1.3 to 1.8 million across the same period. ONS data demonstrates over 50% of this increase in the volume of unemployed people was accounted for by people aged under 25.^{[footnote 2]}

Figure 1.1: Number of vacancies per unemployed person, UK

Source: ONS, ‘VACS01: Vacancies and unemployment’^{[footnote 3]}, Q1 2016 to Q1 2026

A loosening labour market is also reported by institutions such as the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), the Bank of England and corroborated by wider data points on spare capacity in the labour market. ^{[footnote 4] [footnote 5] [footnote 6] [footnote 7] [footnote 8]}

These looser labour market conditions should mean that, in general, shortages are not as prevalent as they were in 2022 or 2023. Within the context of the TSL review, this means we generally expected shortages at an occupational level to be less prevalent than if the review was undertaken five years ago, at the height of post-pandemic labour market tightness.

The extent that this picture is felt by a given employer, occupation or sector can vary. Figure 1.2 below highlights that in May 2026 a smaller share of businesses surveyed across almost all sectors reported experiencing a worker shortage compared to May 2023, but the extent of reductions varies.

Figure 1.2: Share of businesses reporting worker shortages, UK

Source: ONS ‘Business insights and impact on the UK economy: 21 May 2026’

Notes:

1. Real Estate Activities and Water Supply, Sewerage and Waste Management and Remediation Activities are excluded from the chart above as data was missing in one or both periods.
2. The survey was sent to around 39,000 UK businesses, with results for May 2026 based on around 25.6% (9,899) and results for May 2023 based on around 27.6% (10,747) of all businesses surveyed who responded.

When making assessments for individual occupations, we were lenient in looking for any signs of shortage relative to the wider trend of reducing shortages across the economy. We applied a relatively generous threshold for indications of shortage applied in occupational assessments (see Chapter 2) and hoped Jobs Plans would explain why shortages are persisting despite the general loosening of the labour market.

The second stage of this review has also been conducted against a backdrop of growing use of artificial intelligence (AI). The adoption of this technology has the potential to impact shortage assessments of occupations in the future, however the extent of its impact remains uncertain. It has the potential to reduce demand for routine, automation-prone roles while increasing demand for higher-skill, complementary work. At the same time, by enhancing productivity, AI could expand output and create new tasks, shaping labour demand and shifting skill requirements on the supply side. The overall effect is likely to depend on how widely and in what ways AI is adopted, with outcomes ranging from modest task adaptation within roles to more significant changes in employment and wages. As a result of this uncertainty, we have not treated exposure to AI as a determining factor in assessing future shortage. As outlined in our TSL Stage 1 report, we envisage a full review of the TSL to be undertaken every three years, at which points we would reassess and account for available evidence on impacts of AI at an occupational level.

The following chapter provides more information on the factors we have considered while making our assessments of occupations in this review.

Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Labour Market Impacts in the Industrial Strategy Sectors

In conducting this review, we were conscious of increasing commentary on the extent AI will reshape the economy and reduce hiring.^{[footnote 9]} Here we summarise the evidence and extent this could be factored into our recommendations.

Recent evidence suggests that generative AI is beginning to affect labour demand, although most of the literature focuses on potential AI exposure rather than realised labour market outcomes. New research estimates the share of tasks within an occupation that AI could perform.^{[footnote 10] [footnote 11]} Most occupations are expected to see partial exposure, where some tasks change and others remain.^{[footnote 12] [footnote 13]} This suggests that AI is more likely to change jobs than remove them. However, the evidence base is still developing and reflects both the early stage of AI adoption and uncertainty around the balance between productivity gains and labour market adjustment.^{[footnote 14]}

AI exposure across TSL occupations is uneven and often limited in intensity. Using Skills England’s AI exposure data, around half of 82 TSL occupations under consideration in Stage 2 of this review have relatively low AI exposure.^{[footnote 15]} Relatively higher AI exposure is concentrated in analytical roles in sectors such as Professional and Business Services and Financial Services. By contrast, many technical and hands-on roles, particularly in construction, installation and related sectors, are likely to be less directly affected. At the same time, impacts are also likely to emerge gradually. ONS survey data shows that AI adoption among UK firms is still at an early stage, with reported efficiency gains and process improvements, but limited evidence of large reductions in employment.^{[footnote 16]} As a result, direct AI impacts are likely to be limited for a substantial proportion of TSL occupations in the near term.

However, limitations apply when interpreting this evidence for TSL purposes. Most studies use broad occupational groups or task-based measures that do not consistently map directly to RQF levels or TSL occupations. The available data also covers a short period since the introduction of generative AI tools and may not reflect longer-term changes, including new roles or new types of work. As such, it does not provide a sufficiently granular basis for occupation-by-occupation assessments.

Based on the current evidence, AI should be considered a contextual factor influencing labour demand, rather than a determinant of shortage. While emerging evidence indicates that AI may reduce demand for some analytical and technical tasks, particularly in entry-level roles, it may increase demand for complementary skills at higher levels, indicating a shift in the composition of labour demand, and the importance of skills investment and workforce adaptation.^{[footnote 17]} Given the uneven nature of AI exposure and the limitations of evidence, the implications for RQF 3-5 occupations within IS‑8 sectors remain uncertain and are not yet sufficiently developed to inform specific TSL judgements.

Chapter 2: Methodology and Call for Evidence process

2.1 Overview of review process

Within Stage 2 of this Temporary Shortage List (TSL) commission, we used four tests to assess whether an occupation should be recommended for TSL access, as shown in Figure 2.1 below. The tests were a refinement of the questions within our commissioning letter and the Immigration White Paper (IWP) and were organised sequentially for transparency and efficiency.

“In reaching its TSL recommendations, the MAC should look at issues such as:

• how far the workforce strategy is underpinned by a skills strategy
• how far it is underpinned by a commitment to work with the Department for Work and Pensions on a domestic labour strategy
• how the sector will manage the risk of exploitation of workers, particularly migrant workers in the sector; and
• whether the strategy is sufficiently ambitious”

TSL commissioning letter

Each test was informed by a mix of quantitative and qualitative evidence. A key source of information for Stage 2 of the review were the occupation-level Jobs Plans we received from government sector experts as part of our Call for Evidence (CfE) process. This was supplemented by data analysis and wider stakeholder engagement. This chapter provides more detail on the data and methodology behind each of these elements, and Table 2.2 provides a high-level summary of how they relate to each of the tests.

Note that the Jobs Plans submitted to the MAC in early February for the purpose of conducting this review are distinct from the Jobs Plans that are being published for all growth-driving sectors identified by the Industrial Strategy, as well as construction. These are being developed with industry support and published by government. This report refers to TSL-focused Jobs Plans, which were the basis for forming our conclusions and can be seen as an internal draft of the published plans.

Figure 2.1: Overview of the four tests used to assess TSL access within Stage 2 of the review

1. Is the occupation currently in shortage or likely to be in shortage in the future?
   • Yes: Go to Question 2
   • No: Not suitable for TSL
2. Do the sectors that rely on this occupation have credible plans to maximise use of the domestic workforce?
   • Yes: Go to Question 3
   • No: Not suitable for TSL
3. Are risks of abuse or exploitation being managed?
   • Yes: Go to Question 4
   • No: Not suitable for TSL
4. Is TSL access appropriate, given the nature of the occupation, type of shortage and potential risks?
   • Yes: Potential MAC recommendation:
     • 3-year TSL access
     • 18-month TSL access
     • DN-specific TSL access
   • No: Not suitable for TSL

Table 2.2: Key information sources for each of the four tests

Test to Inform TSL Judgment	Internal MAC analysis	Jobs Plan evidence	Sector engagement
(1) Is the occupation currently in shortage or likely to be in shortage in future?	Focused on historic and current shortage. Includes indexed trends in wages, vacancies and hours worked since 2019.	Provided evidence on future shortage (through, e.g., supply and demand forecasts), as well as supplementing internal MAC analysis on current shortage.	Used to help clarify our understanding across areas.
(2) Do the sectors that rely on this occupation have credible plans to maximise use of the domestic workforce?	Indicators on the causes of shortage inform whether the sector is addressing known issues (e.g. pay and conditions).	The primary data source, with Skills England supporting skills assessment and DWP inputting on domestic workforce strategies.	Sessions used to test ambition, realism and cross-sector involvement.
(3) Are risks of abuse or exploitation being managed?	Data and discussions with the Director of Labour Market Enforcement and UK Visas and Immigration.	Plans were asked to consider risks and suitable mitigations, though sectors where the risk of exploitation is generally lower had a correspondingly lower evidence threshold.	Used to seek further information and clarifications where needed.
(4) Is TSL access appropriate, given the nature of the occupation, type of shortage and potential risks?	Evidence provided through visa use (including concentration among sponsors) and employment characteristics (e.g. self-employment).	Jobs Plans should provide a well-evidenced view on the drivers of shortage and a justification for migration use.	Provides an opportunity to further test the evidence that sectors have provided, critically discuss their need for migration access.

2.2 Data analysis

Quantitative data analysis was used to support our assessment of occupations across the four tests. This included indicators relevant to assessing if an occupation is in shortage, which were published in October 2025, as well as analysis assessing the risks of abuse and exploitation, and whether it would be appropriate to provide TSL access for an occupation. This work is outlined in greater detail in Annex 1.

It should be noted that quantitative data provides only contextual information to consider alongside the evidence gathered via the Call for Evidence and subsequent stakeholder engagement. We did not use data alone to make pass or fail decisions on any tests.

Our analysis may differ in approach from other government publications. For example, Skills England’s Occupations in Demand analysis is designed to assess occupational demand (not shortage) at a point in time compared to a historical baseline, whereas our shortage analysis focuses more on relative trends in shortage indicators over recent years.^{[footnote 18]}

Quantitative data was produced to look at indicators at English region and Devolved Nation level as far as possible. However, robust data at the occupational level at smaller geographic levels was limited, meaning quantitative data did not materially affect our recommendations.

2.3 Call for Evidence

As outlined in the commissioning letter, for an occupation to be placed onto the TSL, it must have an ambitious Jobs Plan in place which aims to maximise the use of the UK workforce. To coordinate the collection of these and to gather wider evidence, we ran a public CfE lasting over 15 weeks between 17 October 2025 and 2 February 2026.

The CfE was split across two questionnaires, one for the government organisations submitting the core Jobs Plans, and one for representative bodies submitting additional information. Ahead of the CfE launch, we engaged iteratively with government departments to identify and agree appropriate leads for each occupation and to share early drafting guidance. We published this occupation mapping and, where available, relevant email addresses for submitting information to plans alongside our CfE. This process both assisted coordination across departments but also helped external stakeholders to input into the Jobs Plans process. We recognised that government departments alone could not deliver these plans and the support of employers and sector organisations was key to the creation of a strong plan. Therefore, in the first instance, representative bodies were encouraged to engage with government sector leads to help support Jobs Plans and advised to do so as early as possible to give government sector experts time to absorb the information into the plans. We also acknowledged that representative bodies may have additional useful evidence that sat outside of the core Jobs Plan and so created the second CfE questionnaire for this purpose.

To support those submitting evidence, the questionnaire was structured as a simple occupation-specific template. This primarily consisted of open text fields focused on three topic areas:

• Shortage and drivers: Current and recent shortage, the drivers behind this, and relevant background information to the role;
• The future: Recent employment trends and what future employment might look like for this occupation over the next five to ten years; and
• Actions: An overview of the actions that have been, or are being taken, by industry and the government to address any shortfall and to maximise the use of the domestic workforce.

More detailed guidance and prompts were published alongside the templates for respondents, as well as the quantitative data noted above. We further supported those submitting the core Jobs Plans throughout the CfE period by sharing data, attending weekly progress meetings convened by the ISU within DBT and sharing an example of a completed Jobs Plan for an out-of-scope occupation. Following the closure of the CfE we acknowledged receipt of the Jobs Plans and clarified arguments and sources with leads.

2.3.1 Roundtables and additional stakeholder engagement

We checked and developed our understanding of occupational evidence by engaging external stakeholders after the CfE deadline. We invited employers who used the immigration system (based on visa usage data), trade union and trade body representatives, as well as government sector leads to roundtables. These were organised by Industrial Strategy sector (e.g. a roundtable focused on Advanced Manufacturing occupations). As Foundational Industries and critical infrastructure was the lead sector for close to half of the occupations that we received Jobs Plans for (see Table 2.3), we held two sessions covering occupations in this sector. We did not organise sessions for Defence or Financial Services as they did not submit any Jobs Plans.

Where permission was granted by the leading government department, we shared the relevant Jobs Plans with attendees beforehand. All sessions aimed to discuss current and future workforce challenges, sense-check our interpretation of the evidence, and identify any gaps that required further consideration. We also held targeted bilateral engagements and small group discussions on certain occupations that were less well covered during the initial roundtable discussions. All engagements to inform this review are listed in Annex 2.

2.3.2 Engagement with Devolved Nations

Beyond our engagement with the Devolved Nations through the Labour Market Evidence Group (LMEG), we facilitated connections between Devolved Government officials and UK government sector leads, to ensure devolved perspectives were fed into the Jobs Plans. Our Devolved Nations team within the Secretariat also had regular check-ins with our Devolved Government counterparts throughout this review.

We invited Devolved Nations-based employers and trade bodies representatives to our roundtables following the CfE to get a fuller picture of workforce challenges for the relevant occupations in scope across the UK.

This additional engagement with Devolved Nations reduced the risk of overlooking arguments and evidence specific to Devolved Nations given the limitations of quantitative data below the UK level.

2.4 Jobs Plan submissions

All 82 occupations that we progressed to Stage 2 of this review were eligible for Jobs Plan submissions. We were expansive in the list of occupations progressed to Stage 2 on the basis of their relevance to the Industrial Strategy or critical infrastructure, erring on the side of caution when argued for by stakeholders. Most of these occupations (58/82) were progressed on the basis of having over half of occupational employment in prioritised sectors, as a proxy for importance. A further 24 progressed because they were explicitly advocated for by stakeholders.

We received Jobs Plans for 46 of the 82 occupations which progressed to Stage 2 of our review. The inclusive approach in Stage 1 reduced the risk of prematurely excluding important occupations and enabled stakeholders to prioritise their efforts in Stage 2. This process helps explain why a relatively high number of occupations (36) were progressed to Stage 2 but did not receive a Jobs Plan, including eight occupations that government stakeholders had advocated for progression from Stage 1.

Table 2.3 summarises how these were distributed across the Industrial Strategy sectors. This includes the three Jobs Plans submitted by ISU, who led on cross-cutting occupations which did not sit clearly within any one sector. In addition, four occupations received a second Jobs Plan from a government department which was not the lead but felt the occupation was important to one of their sub-sectors. The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), for example, provided additional Jobs Plans for two Advanced Manufacturing codes due to their association with the quantum and semiconductor frontier sectors.

Table 2.3: Table of Jobs Plan distribution across the Prioritised Sectors

Lead sector	Occupations with Jobs Plans
Advanced Manufacturing	9
Clean Energy	3
Creative Industries	4
Digital and Tech	3
Foundational Industries/critical infrastructure	21
Cross-cutting (submissions led by Industrial Strategy Unit in DBT)	3
Life Sciences	2
Professional Services	1
Defence	0
Financial Services	0
Total	46

2.4.1 Occupations without plans

We did not receive Jobs Plans for 36 of the 82 occupations that were in scope for Stage 2 of our report. Whilst these 36 represent more than 40% of the occupations within Stage 2 of the review, they were generally smaller users of the immigration system, only accounting for around 20% of visa usage amongst the 82 occupations.

We were in regular contact with government departments throughout the Call for Evidence period to clarify which occupations would have Jobs Plan submissions. The reasons for not submitting a Jobs Plan varied, but in general reflected a view that migration was not crucial to the occupation. This could be because the occupation was not in shortage, historically had very low visa usage, or because only a small proportion of roles were impacted (for example in the Financial Services sector, recruitment was generally for Regulatory Qualification Framework (RQF) 6+ roles, rather than RQF 3-5).

We interpret the non-submission of a Jobs Plan as a conscious decision by the relevant government department(s) based on the need for TSL access and/or the likelihood of a given occupation passing the criteria for access.

2.4.2 Evolution of lists of priority occupations

The set of occupations that received Jobs Plans appears to reflect a small change or refinement in the list of occupations that government considers relevant for the Industrial Strategy and critical infrastructure. The interim TSL published in July 2025 contains 52 occupations at RQF 3-5 which DBT and His Majesty’s Treasury (HMT) identified as being important to the UK’s Industrial Strategy. 50 of these passed into Stage 2 of our review, with the other two removed as they did not meet our threshold of having 50% of employees working within the prioritised sectors and were not advocated for by any government sector experts during Stage 1 of our report.

17 occupations, despite appearing on the interim TSL, did not receive a Jobs Plan submission. Conversely, we received 13 Jobs Plans for occupations that had not been on the interim TSL. This suggests that some occupations currently on the interim TSL are either no longer considered a priority for TSL access or were deemed unlikely to pass the criteria for TSL access, while some additional occupations that were not previously prioritised have now been identified as relevant. The Skills England list of “priority occupations”, across all skill levels, has also changed from 2025 to 2026, with 12 additions and 10 removals in the latest list of 150.^{[footnote 19]} This need for fine-tuning of priority occupation lists may reduce as the Industrial Strategy beds in.

Table 2.4: Crossover between interim TSL and occupations in scope for Stage 2 of the TSL

Category	On the interim TSL	Not on the interim TSL	Total
Progressed to Stage 2 and received a Jobs Plan	33	13	46
Progressed to Stage 2 but no Jobs Plan received	17	19	36
Total	50	32	82

The spreadsheet published alongside this report (Annex 4) contains information for each occupation including whether it is on the interim TSL, the Immigration Salary List (ISL), the Skills England priority occupation lists for 2025 and 2026, whether it progressed to Stage 2 and whether it is ultimately recommended for TSL access.

Please refer to our Stage 1 report (page 18) for information on how Skills England Priority Occupations informed our assessments in the TSL review.

2.5 Additional evidence received

In addition to the Jobs Plans evidence, we received a wide range of submissions from businesses and representative bodies. We received 31 submissions via our online CfE, covering all of the Industrial Strategy sectors and Foundational Industries/critical infrastructure. More detail on these submissions is available in Annex 2.

Many of the responses submitted evidence on more than one SOC code. Therefore, across the 31 submissions, respondents submitted evidence on 64 of the 82 occupations in scope for Stage 2 of our review. In total, they made 167 separate cases for occupations to be included on the TSL, with several occupations argued for by multiple respondents. In addition to the online CfE responses, we received a further 16 direct email submissions. Across these 16 submissions, we received a total of 101 endorsements covering 50 occupations.

We primarily used the evidence within these submissions to help support and contextualise the evaluation of the Jobs Plans submitted by UK government sector leads. External submissions were a rich source of local detail, particularly regarding the evidence and impact of shortage.

Most of the responses related to occupations which received a Jobs Plan. However, a minority related to occupations for which no Industrial Strategy sector team in UK government submitted a Jobs Plan, or in one case, an occupation that had not progressed into Stage 2 of our review, so was not eligible. Given the terms of our commissioning letter and the broader TSL policy intent, a Jobs Plan is a prerequisite for TSL access, and we were therefore unable to formally consider these occupations further. However, for completeness, all responses were still reviewed and, where applicable, cross checked against known reasons for not submitting a Jobs Plan. Whilst these submissions contained valuable insights, they did not contain any evidence which led us to believe that there had been a major omission from the relevant government department.

2.6 How we worked with LMEG

LMEG have provided expert input from the outset of the TSL review, starting in Stage 1 with support to identify occupations crucial to the delivery of Industrial Strategy or critical infrastructure (see page 3 of the Stage 1 report). In Stage 2 of this review, the contributions of LMEG have been crucial throughout.

2.6.1 Guidance and support before and during the CfE

We worked closely with LMEG to provide support and guidance to government sector experts before and during the Call for Evidence. Members of LMEG provided information about their respective areas of expertise such as:

• Skills England pooled relevant education data on topics such as education starts, time to train and skills demand indicators to make sure Jobs Plans had as much of an analytical underpinning as possible. Much of this information is published, such as Skills Needs Assessments, Occupations in Demand and Labour Market and Skills Projections.
• DWP ran sessions with government sector experts to share information on their key initiatives such as Sector-based work academy programmes (SWAPs).
• The Devolved Nations directly contributed to Jobs Plans where relevant, sharing insights on drivers, shortage and actions. Separately, the Welsh and Northern Ireland Executive also submitted evidence directly via the Call for Evidence to reflect labour market conditions in their own area. In early March, we emailed contacts in each Devolved Nation with a provisional list of occupations that did not appear to be in shortage and invited them to share whether they felt any were in shortage in their nation.

The Industrial Strategy Unit in DBT played a key role in coordinating inputs, ensuring alignment across plans and monitoring progress before the CfE closed.

While the Call for Evidence was live, we discussed a draft review framework with LMEG members, iterating it into the model with four tests shown at the start of this chapter.

2.6.2 Reviewing Responses

LMEG provided independent and expert views when reviewing all Jobs Plan submissions, in particular informing our assessment of shortage evidence and Jobs Plans.

In parallel to our assessment, Skills England reviewed whether plans had made full use of Skills England data on future skills needs, the extent skills supply was a primary cause of current and future shortage, and whether skills interventions were appropriate and likely to be effective. DWP also provided information a sector-level description on partnerships and how they engage with Industrial Strategy employers. This included the depth and effectiveness of those partnerships, and employer participation in DWP work programmes such as SWAPs.

2.6.3 Sharing overall MAC judgements for feedback

Throughout May and June 2026, we shared provisional recommendations with LMEG members on the occupations we were recommending for the TSL along with our reasoning. We asked LMEG members to comment whether they felt we had been fair in their assessment of occupations and if they had any concerns if any of the occupations losing access to the TSL could hinder key government objectives. This is the first commission where we have shared provisional recommendations for feedback from outside of the MAC ahead of publication, and we did so to further test our recommendations against the evidence base of our LMEG colleagues – an approach that was in the spirit of the commissioning letter, which asked for the MAC to “work with the Labour Market Evidence Group (LMEG) to collect and analyse data relevant to this review”.

We noted LMEG feedback regarding the risks for Industrial Strategy delivery of some occupations not receiving TSL access. The MAC carefully considered these reflections which we respond to in Section 3.5 of our recommendations chapter. These recommendations reflect the MAC’s own judgements as an independent body separate of the Home Office and LMEG after consideration of expertise from LMEG members.

Overall, we hugely valued all the engagement with LMEG throughout the TSL review process and look forward to working with LMEG to inform future iterations of the TSL.

Chapter 3: Recommendations

3.1 How we applied the assessment criteria

The suitability of each occupation for the Temporary Shortage List (TSL) is considered through four tests applied sequentially. These tests correspond directly to the requirements for TSL inclusion set out in the commissioning letter from the Home Secretary, considering shortage, the strength of planned actions, exploitation risks and the overall appropriateness of TSL for supporting labour supply into the occupation. At each stage, occupations judged not to meet requirements are de-prioritised and not progressed to the next test. For occupations which do progress through all tests, our final decision on the level of TSL access is based on evidence from across all stages.

Our first test was an assessment of whether the occupation is in shortage or likely to be in the near future - a clear necessity for inclusion on the TSL. This test relied on historic quantitative data, evidence provided in Jobs Plans and our wider stakeholder engagement. Here, our data indicators rarely pointed conclusively to shortage, so it was the strength of the Jobs Plan evidence covering both current and future shortage which provided the main basis for our judgements. This evidence was generally weak and often focused on broad, sector-level trends, making it difficult to identify shortage at the occupational level. However, some Jobs Plans were able to identify clear upcoming policy commitments or infrastructure projects that will drive demand and some made convincing arguments around supply bottlenecks. We gave the benefit of the doubt to occupations in borderline cases, considering any clear data or persuasive argument of shortage to be sufficient to pass this test. Ultimately, we de-prioritised seven occupations at this stage.

Our second test assessed whether plans to maximise the use of the domestic workforce were credible and targeted. Stronger Jobs Plans were clear about the drivers of shortage, drew on sector and stakeholder evidence, and linked planned actions directly to the occupations or job titles where shortages were identified. Many tended to have clear limitations, often failing to link actions to the drivers of shortage, not identifying occupation-specific activities or not providing any detail on delivery or monitoring plans. Very few actions mentioned in plans provided any sense of the expected magnitude of impact. Once more, we sought to give occupations the benefit of the doubt, understanding that this was the first time government departments had produced such a document mapping sector-level planning to specific occupations. At this stage we deprioritised a further seven occupations, deeming that we had no confidence the plans would increase the supply of domestic workers relative to the shortage.

The second test was also used to signal whether 18 month or three-year TSL access is more appropriate, with 18-month TSL access intended for occupations where Jobs Plans need improvement. The overall quality of the plans led us to feel that all occupations we are putting forward for inclusion on the list should receive 18-month rather than three-year TSL access.

Our third test sought to understand whether risks of abuse or exploitation are being managed by the occupation. Given limitations in the ability to assess exploitation risk, reservations over the ability of UK Visas and I data to clearly identify abuse at the occupational level, and constraints on how far enforcement bodies could identify exploitation risks (outside of identifying the whole construction sector), we did not feel we could use this test as a decisive factor in access decisions. We therefore did not de-prioritise any occupations at this stage. Instead, we have commented, in Section 3.6.1 below, on the sector most at risk (construction) and recommended ways to monitor and mitigate the risks.

Our fourth and final test considers, on balance, whether TSL access is appropriate, given the nature of the occupation, type of shortage and potential risks. Here we considered issues such as the impact of not including the occupation on the TSL, the merits of using migration as a response to the particular shortage, how far occupational skills were generic or transferable and could therefore be sourced from the wider labour market, and whether TSL inclusion/exclusion might lead to abuse.

Ultimately, we sought to ensure that the spirit and integrity of the TSL as envisioned in the Immigration White Paper was balanced with pragmatism given this is the first time this exercise has been conducted, and the risk that high-priority sectors could be deprived of labour which stifles growth. This led to recommending more occupations for 18-month TSL access than we expect to in future iterations of this process. As we set out in the next chapter, we recommend that the occupations recommended for 18-month TSL access submit focused updates to plans to extend access beyond 18 months.

While our Stage 1 report set the default duration for an occupation to be included on the TSL as three years (balancing responsiveness to changing labour markets and government priorities with giving sectors enough time to progress their Jobs Plans), we did note that in this first iteration plans may lack evidence or need time to be improved. With this in mind, we suggested granting TSL access for a shorter period for these occupations (up to 18 months) to give sectors more time to develop a convincing strategy. This has indeed been the case in this review and is reflected by the number of occupations assigned 18-month access.

Table 3.1: Number of occupations, employees and visas under consideration at each stage of the TSL review

Group	Number of occupations	Number of employees(4)	Visa use (three-year average)(4)
All occupations currently treated as Regulatory Qualification Framework (RQF) 3-5 in the immigration system(1)	178	11.3 million (10.5 million excluding care workers)	71,000 (22,000 excluding care workers)
All occupations that are RQF 3-5(2)	151	9.1 million	14,000
All occupations deemed potentially crucial to the Industrial Strategy or critical infrastructure (published in the MAC’s Stage 1 report in October 2025)	82	5.5 million	10,000
All occupations with Jobs Plans	46	2.8 million	8,000
Occupations recommended for TSL access (all 18-month)(3)	28	1.3 million	4,000

Notes:

(1) This includes care and senior care workers who, through access to Skilled Worker (SW)/Health and Care Worker (H&CW) visas, were treated as if RQF 3-5 until July 2025 when these occupations became ineligible to new overseas applicants.

(2) In our Stage 1 report we recommended that occupations should be treated in the Immigration Rules according to their objective skill level. One nuance was to recommend that ‘2455 Construction project managers and related professionals’ continue to be treated with RQF Level 6+ status. See page 16 of our Stage 1 report for more information.

(3) Specific job titles within a further two occupations – 3414 ‘Dancers and Choreographers’ and 3415 ‘Musicians’ – are recommended for SW access, as set out in Section 3.4.

(4) The number of employees is estimated using Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) 2025 data, and visa use reflects the estimated average out-of-country visa grants from 2022/23 to 2024/25, using processes outlined in Annex 1.

3.2 Occupations recommended for 18-month TSL access

We did not feel that any occupations provided a strong enough plan to address shortages through utilising the domestic workforce to merit full three-year TSL access. However, we recommend 28 occupations for 18-month access. For these occupations, while variable, the case for current or future shortage was plausible.

Jobs Plans, while not always strong, tended to at least be generally relevant to the drivers of shortage identified, even if actions could have been better targeted and offered a sense of magnitude of impact. In some cases, the clear importance of occupations to immediate government priorities such as housebuilding meant access was deemed proportionate given the risks of exclusion from the immigration system. We recommend the following occupations for 18-month TSL access.

Table 3.2: Occupations recommended for 18-month access to the TSL

Occupation	Relevant sector(s). Government sector teams that submitted Jobs Plans are marked (JP).
3112 Electrical and electronics technicians	Advanced Manufacturing (JP), Digital and Technology (JP), Clean Energy
3113 Engineering technicians	Advanced Manufacturing (JP), Digital and Technology (JP), Clean Energy, Defence
5211 Sheet metal workers	Advanced Manufacturing (JP), Clean Energy
5221 Metal machining setters and setter-operators	Advanced Manufacturing (JP), Clean Energy
5223 Metal working production and maintenance fitters	Advanced Manufacturing (JP), Clean Energy, Defence, Foundational Industries/Critical Infrastructure
5213 Welding trades	Advanced Manufacturing (JP), Clean Energy, Defence, Foundational Industries/Critical Infrastructure
5235 Boat and ship builders and repairers	Advanced Manufacturing (JP)
3116 Planning, process and production technicians	Clean Energy, Digital and Technology, Advanced Manufacturing (JP)
5212 Metal plate workers, smiths, moulders and related occupations	Clean Energy (JP)
5249 Electrical and electronic trades n.e.c. – Overhead Line Workers only	Clean Energy (JP), Foundational Industries/Critical Infrastructure (JP)
3133 Database administrators and web content technicians	Digital and Technology (JP)
3544 Data analysts	Digital and Technology (JP), Advanced Manufacturing, Clean Energy, Financial Services, Foundation Industries/Critical Infrastructure
5242 Telecoms and related network installers and repairers	Digital and Technology (JP), Clean Energy
3114 Building and civil engineering technicians	Foundational Industries/Critical Infrastructure (JP), Clean Energy, Digital and Technology, Professional and Business Services
3512 Ship and hovercraft officers	Foundational Industries/Critical Infrastructure (JP), Clean Energy
5214 Pipe fitters	Foundational Industries/Critical Infrastructure (JP), Clean Energy
5241 Electricians and electrical fitters	Foundational Industries/Critical Infrastructure (JP), Clean Energy
5313 Bricklayers	Foundational Industries/Critical Infrastructure JP), Clean Energy
5314 Roofers, roof tilers and slaters	Foundational Industries/Critical Infrastructure (JP), Clean Energy
5315 Plumbers & heating and ventilating installers and repairers	Foundational Industries/Critical Infrastructure (JP), Clean Energy
5316 Carpenters and joiners	Foundational Industries/Critical Infrastructure (JP), Clean Energy
5319 Construction and building trades n.e.c. – Building envelope specialists, Curtain wall installers	Foundational Industries/Critical Infrastructure (JP), Clean Energy
5321 Plasterers	Foundational Industries/Critical Infrastructure (JP), Clean Energy
5322 Floorers and wall tilers	Foundational Industries/Critical Infrastructure (JP), Clean Energy
5323 Painters and decorators	Foundational Industries/Critical Infrastructure (JP)
5330 Construction and building trades supervisors	Foundational Industries/Critical Infrastructure (JP), Clean Energy
8113 Chemical and related process operatives	Foundational Industries/Critical Infrastructure (JP), Advanced Manufacturing, Digital and Technology, Life Sciences
3120 CAD, drawing and architectural technicians	Foundational Industries/Critical Infrastructure(JP) , Clean Energy, Digital and Technology, Professional and Business Services

Stronger and weaker cases for inclusion

While we recommend that all 28 of the above occupations receive 18-month TSL access, the strength and nature of the case for access varied. Here we outline examples of occupations with a relatively strong, middling, and weak case for access within the 18-month group.

Stronger case: 5213 ‘Welding Trades’

This occupation represents a stronger case for access within the 18-month category. Whilst arguments could be made for a three-year recommendation, there are still some weaknesses.

In summary, our quantitative data suggested shortage, with earnings and adverts data generally above the UK trend. Though the actions within the Jobs Plan were generally pitched at a sector- rather than occupation-level, they were still relatively strong compared to many plans. Specifically for the occupation, there was some evidence of industry-level action, including setting up shorter-form work-based training at Level 3 to support people into welding, and the Engineering Construction Industry Training Board (ECITB) prioritising grant support for the occupation.

Factors pushing against longer TSL access were that fewer than half of employees (~45% to 46%) work in the prioritised sectors, there is an overlap with construction (11-13% of employees work in critical infrastructure) which could potentially indicate a slightly higher risk of exploitation, and the argument that a consistent approach amongst metalwork codes may be beneficial. This occupation also sits within a group of four other metalworking occupations in Advanced Manufacturing which have slightly weaker cases, and having a markedly different length of visa for just this occupation could risk driving unintended behaviours amongst employers.

Moderate case: 5212 ‘Metal plate workers, smiths, moulders and related occupations’

This occupation represents a moderate case for access among the occupations recommended for 18-month access. Whilst reasonable arguments are presented, there are clear areas for improvement. On the first test, quantitative data and stakeholder engagement made a reasonable case for shortage. Historical trends suggest shortage is present in more recent years, and narrative arguments on the nuclear pipeline increasing labour demand support a case for future shortage. Actions were not always focused on the occupational level, however the breadth of sectoral initiatives made a reasonable case for addressing relevant shortage drivers. For example, actions span areas such as retraining oil and gas workers to extend working lives, industry initiatives to promote the attractiveness of the sector and increase hiring diversity, and industry input to improve training design. Stakeholder engagement also made clear that factors outside of stakeholder control limited the effectiveness of actions (e.g. relatively lower pay reducing incentives to become Further Education trainers). No evidence on exploitation was noted and there were not significant concerns when considering the fourth test of appropriateness.

Stronger arguments would provide clearer outlines of demand and supply into the occupation and make clear the expected shortage ‘gap’ to fill, alongside greater specificity in how actions link to occupations and more directly explain why actions are relevant to drivers of shortage in the occupation.

Weaker case: Finishing trades which includes 5321 ‘Plasterers’, 5322 ‘Floorers and wall tilers’, 5323 ‘Painters and decorators’

This finishing trades block represents a relatively weak case across both the shortage and action tests. None of the three occupations makes a clear pass on the tests; each is a finely balanced case that only just clears the threshold. However, treating the finishing trades as a cluster justifies 18-month TSL access.

On shortage, quantitative indicators are mixed and do not alone provide a decisive signal of current shortage. This is consistent with the sector’s feedback that the industry is in a contractionary period. Their shortage argument leans heavily on forward-looking demand from housing, retrofit and wider built-environment delivery and the limited speed of domestic supply response. On actions, confidence is low given the plans are predominantly sector-level, modest and unquantified, with limited occupation-specific targets, timelines or evidence that labour supply will substantially change in 1-3 years. Risk of exploitation is elevated by high self-employment and high visa non-grant rates, but low visa volumes limit system exposure. Sponsor usage looks mostly dispersed, though painters show clustering around ‘industrial painter’ sponsorship.

What materially strengthens the case for treating these three occupations as a block is the fact they are highly embedded in the Industrial Strategy and critical infrastructure (CI) sector. This is particularly the case for plasterers and floorers/tilers, while painters and decorators have a weaker CI embedding. Overall, modest shortages in the near future could disproportionately impact the delivery of government plans.

The following section summarises the evidence for each of the four sectors containing occupations we recommended for 18-month TSL access.

Advanced Manufacturing

We suggest 18-month TSL access for seven of the nine Advanced Manufacturing codes we received Jobs Plans for, but there is variation amongst these. In particular, four of the codes relate to metalwork (as well as further metalwork codes in other sectors). At the stronger end is ‘Welding trades’, which has strong evidence of shortage, a comparatively strong action plan, and clear links to Industrial Strategy deliverables. Further information on this case is outlined in the ‘stronger case ‘box above. At the weaker end is ‘Metal working production and maintenance fitters’, which displays only mild indicators of shortage and relatively generic actions. However, both had strengths and weaknesses, and given the overlap and interdependence between these occupations we have suggested 18-month TSL access to all of them. This aims to provide simplicity to UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI) and to the sector, as well as seeking to minimise any unintended behaviours caused by having related occupations with different levels of access. There was similar variation across the remaining three Advanced Manufacturing codes recommended for TSL access (Electrical and electronics technicians, Engineering technicians, and Boat and ship builders and repairers) with, for example, some evidence of shortage in the technician roles but the small sample size limiting the available evidence for boat and ship builders in particular.

Clean Energy

All three Clean Energy occupations are recommended for 18-month TSL access and are broadly similar in making ‘moderate’ cases. However, ‘Metal plate workers, smiths, moulders and related occupations’ and

‘Electrical and electronic trades n.e.c.’ were slightly stronger than ‘Planning, process and production technicians’. The difference comes in shortage – where ‘Planning, process and production technicians’ is reliant on qualitative discussion of future demand, the other two had quantitative data supporting shortage assessments. Other areas such as discussion of actions were similar across occupations.

Digital and Technology

All three Digital and Technology occupations are recommended for 18-month TSL access, providing similar evidence and making a ‘moderate’ case overall. Quantitative indicators on signs of shortage narrowly met our threshold but we had more confidence that actions in the sector were deliverable and deal with some of the skills drivers of shortage. Improved targeting on the other constraints to supply could have been mentioned (e.g. on pay, retention and mid-career upskilling) and the actions could have been more targeted. Therefore, we see these occupations as falling in the “middle of the pack” with regard to strength of Jobs Plans.

Foundational Industries/Critical Infrastructure

Just under half of all Jobs Plans (21) fell under this sector, which was reflected in the variability in Jobs Plan quality. We recommend 15 out of the 21 occupations for 18-month access to the TSL, although it should be noted that a number of occupations we recommend (e.g. ‘Plasterers’, ‘Floorers and wall tilers’, ‘Painters and decorators’) were on the weaker end of the occupations recommended for 18-month TSL access. This was primarily because of a lack of occupation-specific actions targeted at the drivers of shortage. Stronger Jobs Plans produced by the sector such as for ‘Construction and building trades n.e.c’ were able to point to actions that specifically related to the occupation, and in this instance for particular job titles within it.

For the occupations in this sector that did not meet our threshold for TSL inclusion, only one did so on the grounds of a lack of shortage evidence (‘Skilled metal, electrical and electronic trades supervisors’) while it was poorly targeted or non-existent actions that resulted in the majority of fails.

3.3 Occupations not recommended for TSL access

We recommend that 18 occupations should not receive TSL access. Seven occupations were judged not to be in shortage, a further seven assessed to have action plans which are not credible nor targeted, and two more failed the appropriate access test. For two occupations – ‘Dancers and Choreographers’ and ‘Musicians’ – we recommend separate treatment (see Section 3.4).

3.3.1 Occupations failing the shortage test

Being in shortage is a clear necessity for inclusion on the TSL. In seven cases, our assessment of the evidence was that the occupation was not in shortage nor likely to be in future. For these occupations, Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) analysis of historic data was available and consistently pointed away from shortage pressures (e.g. the occupation exhibited weaker wage growth than the UK average). Jobs Plans for these occupations tended to be highly generic and evidence would often undermine shortage arguments. This included showing demand growth was within historic employment fluctuations, that potential resource was available to fill labour shortfalls, or that the majority of businesses surveyed did not expect employment growth or feel skill shortages exist. They might also rely on shortage forecasts which were implausible or based on methodologically limited analysis, such as labour supply forecasts that were perfectly flat as labour demand grows.

Table 3.3: Occupations not recommended for TSL access because they are not in shortage

Occupation	Relevant sector(s). Government sector teams that submitted Jobs Plans are marked (JP).
3111 Laboratory technicians	Life Sciences (JP), Advanced Manufacturing, Clean Energy, Digital and Technology
3115 Quality assurance technicians	Digital and Technology, Life Sciences (JP), Advanced Manufacturing, Clean Energy
3549 Business associate professionals n.e.c.	Cross-cutting (Jobs Plan produced by Industrial Strategy Unit) (JP)
3554 Marketing associate professionals	Professional and Business Services, Creative Industries (JP)
3556 Sales accounts and business development managers	Cross-cutting (Jobs Plan produced by Industrial Strategy Unit) (JP)
5234 Aircraft maintenance and related trades	Advanced Manufacturing(JP)
5250 Skilled metal, electrical and electronic trades supervisors	Foundational Industries/Critical Infrastructure(JP), Advanced Manufacturing, Clean Energy

3.3.2 Occupations failing the Jobs Plan test

Producing a convincing plan to maximise use of the UK workforce is central to the government’s intention and purpose of the TSL, which is to provide temporary migration access while domestic workforce is developed.

For seven occupations, we had no confidence the plans would increase the supply of domestic workers relative to the size of the shortage. The Jobs Plans for occupations which failed at this stage did not identify the underlying drivers of shortage, making it difficult to judge if proposed actions would tackle the underlying problems. Plans relied too heavily (or exclusively) on cross-economy skills reforms such as the Growth and Skills Levy, without explaining how or why the occupations in question would benefit. Sector-wide initiatives, such as construction sector skills investment, were referenced in plans but with no detail on the relevance or impacts this spending will generate (e.g. they referred to the amount of funding for skills training but contained no information on how many people that would train or upskill). In some plans, actions were too narrowly targeted at small parts of the occupation.

Table 3.4: Occupations not recommended for TSL access because of the quality of Jobs Plans

Occupation	Relevant sector(s). Government sector teams that submitted Jobs Plans are marked (JP).
5225 Air-conditioning and refrigeration installers and repairers	Foundational Industries/Critical Infrastructure (JP), Clean Energy
1243 Managers in logistics	Foundational Industries/Critical Infrastructure (JP), Advanced Manufacturing
3533 Financial and accounting technicians	Professional and Business Services (JP), Financial Services
3552 Business sales executives	Cross-cutting (Jobs Plan produced by Industrial Strategy Unit) (JP)
3541 Estimators, valuers and assessors	Foundational Industries/Critical Infrastructure (JP), Financial Services
3581 Inspectors of standards and regulations	Foundational Industries/Critical Infrastructure (JP), Advanced Manufacturing, Clean Energy
5245 Security system installers and repairers	Foundational Industries/Critical Infrastructure (JP), Clean Energy

3.3.3 Occupations not appropriate for TSL access

While these occupations passed the shortage and actions tests, ultimately TSL access was not deemed suitable. ‘Design occupations n.e.c.’ were given the benefit of the doubt and narrowly passed on the first two tests. However, as a broad occupation code with many disparate roles included in it, there was no way to be truly confident that shortage existed across the entirety of the occupation code, and Jobs Plan actions were (unsurprisingly) unable to effectively target such a broad range of positions. Including the whole four-digit n.e.c. code would mean roles without clear justification (i.e. no clear evidence on shortage nor any specific actions targeted at them) could access the immigration system. This, combined with potential exploitation issues in the creative industries, and the inherent risk associated with n.e.c. occupations (that, without specifying individual job titles, other occupations might use the code for their own roles) meant access was not deemed appropriate. We encouraged submissions to our Call for Evidence to identify specific roles within n.e.c. occupations. Where other occupations did so, and provided sufficient evidence, they were successful in making the case for inclusion (see 5249 ‘Electrical and electronic trades n.e.c.’ and 5319 ‘Construction and building trades n.e.c.’, with a detailed rationale for each occupation included in Annex 3).

For ‘Vehicle technicians, mechanics and electricians’, the occupation had stronger evidence of shortage and more credible actions, but employment was heavily concentrated in what appears to be retail garages outside the core Industrial Strategy sectors, with only a very small minority of workers and SW migrants working in Advanced Manufacturing. Between July 2024 and June 2025, we estimate only one of the ten sponsors accounting for the largest volumes of out-of-country visa grants in this occupation was in manufacturing and may be undertaking work relevant to the Industrial Strategy. The remainder were in vehicle retail, vehicle repair or servicing, or were transport operators. The sector itself argued that the transition to electric vehicles (EVs) is a key part of the Advanced Manufacturing sector plan, and that this occupation is important in supporting this transition. However, with under 20% of employees in this occupation in the UK working within the Industrial Strategy sectors, and visa usage also concentrated in non-Advanced Manufacturing sectors, this was too far outside of the core purpose of the TSL. Similarly, the EV transition is also not necessarily increasing demand, but changing the skillset of the occupation, which could be resolved by retraining rather than immigration.

Table 3.5: Occupations not suitable for TSL access

Occupation	Relevant sector(s). Government sector teams that submitted Jobs Plans are marked (JP).
3429 Design occupations n.e.c.	Creative Industries (JP), Clean Energy, Professional and Business Services
5231 Vehicle technicians, mechanics and electricians	Advanced Manufacturing (JP), Clean Energy

3.4 Occupations that need separate consideration

The TSL is designed to support mid-skilled occupations which have short-term shortages that the sector and government can work together to solve over a number of years. This might involve tackling common issues such as training pipelines, diversity or retention. Two occupations we considered, ‘Dancers and choreographers’ and ‘Musicians’, stand apart as having a significantly different role for migration. Employers are hiring highly skilled individuals into the occupations not because of a short-term shortage which could be addressed through Jobs Plans, but rather a long-term strategy of attracting exceptionally talented individuals from across the world. For this reason, instead of the TSL we feel it is more appropriate for certain job titles in the occupation to be added to the SW route, where they are genuinely RQF 6+ roles.

We maintain that four-digit occupations should be treated according to their objective skill level, as we recommended in our Stage 1 report. ‘Dancers and choreographers’ are RQF 3-5 and treated as such in the immigration system. ‘Musicians’ also have an objective skill level of RQF 3-5, however, are currently treated as RQF6+ (and hence have access to the SW route), an inconsistency we recommended was remedied in our Stage 1 report. In both cases however – despite a skill level of RQF 3-5 when considering the occupations in their entirety – there are clearly roles within both where the training time and skill level required is degree level or higher.

Hence, we recommend that dancers who are skilled classical “ballet dancers” or skilled “contemporary dancers” who meet the standard required by internationally recognised UK ballet or contemporary dance companies are included on the SW route. The same recommendation applies to Musicians who are skilled orchestral musicians^{[footnote 20]} and who meet the standard required by internationally recognised UK orchestras. This broadly replicates the subsections of the occupations previously prioritised for SOL and ISL access. We note that, as SOC codes tend to be aggregations of several distinct jobs, there is highly likely to be some heterogeneity of skill level within a given occupation. This is normal and does not justify the addition of more senior or specialist roles within mid-skilled occupations to the SW route. The case is specific and exceptional for dancers and musicians in the identification of distinct roles with a particularly high skill requirement (equivalent to degree equivalent work or higher), clearly defined by internationally recognised standards of performance and historically treated separately in the immigration system. We do not anticipate replicating this for other occupations.

Stakeholders told us that the SW salary thresholds would not be feasible for employers to meet, and that they preferred to remain on the TSL where thresholds are currently lower. Analysis of Certificate of Sponsorship (CoS) data suggests that previously sponsored roles with major orchestras comfortably met the existing thresholds, as would many of the sponsored dancers once the new entrant discount has been applied (most sponsored dancers were under 26). In other cases, however, previously sponsored dancers and musicians would not have met SW thresholds, particularly — but not exclusively — those working outside of the major cultural institutions. We also note that highly skilled individuals in these occupations can currently also utilise the Global Talent route in many cases, although some particularly young applicants may not qualify. In the long term, the Home Office should consider which routes are most suitable for these people.

Table 3.6: Occupations that are recommended for differential treatment

Occupation	Relevant sector(s). Government sector teams that submitted Jobs Plans are marked (JP).
3414 Dancers and Choreographers - only skilled classical “ballet dancers” or skilled “contemporary dancers” who meet the standard required by internationally recognised UK ballet or contemporary dance companies	Creative Industries (JP)
3415 Musicians – only skilled orchestral musicians who meet the standard required by internationally recognised UK orchestras	Creative Industries (JP)

3.5 Balancing government objectives and LMEG feedback

The Industrial Strategy Advisory Council (ISAC) and Skills England provided their views on our recommendations.

They highlighted the difficulty in identifying shortage with the data available, especially when restricted to four-digit SOC codes and where regional trends were concerned (a concern also raised at the national level by Devolved Nations colleagues). They noted that because it was the first time the exercise had been undertaken, Jobs Plans were likely to be underdeveloped and allowances should be made for this. They promoted further stakeholder engagement and maximum explanation and transparency of our decision-making process.

We have greatly appreciated ISAC and Skills England’s contribution to this process, and these concerns are ones we share and have sought to mitigate throughout. Appreciating that data issues can make assessing shortage challenging and the limitations of four-digit SOC codes, more weight was placed on the evidence we received through the Call for Evidence and subsequent stakeholder engagement than data, ensuring that our shortage conclusions were guided by expert input. While we did produce a suite of indicators to investigate historic shortage, this information was largely treated as contextual, and we also acknowledge that our approach sometimes differed in focus and methodology to other sources, as set out in Section 2.2. Conscious of the lack of availability of robust regional and national data, we engaged closely with and received evidence from Devolved Nation governments, as well as making a concerted effort to include Devolved Nation based employers and trade bodies in our roundtables (Section 2.3.2).

We fully expected Jobs Plans to be underdeveloped given it was the first time such an exercise had been undertaken and accounted for this in our assessments. In practice, this meant giving occupations the benefit of the doubt as far as possible and only restricting TSL access on Jobs Plans where we truly had no confidence that actions would increase the supply of domestic workers. However, we took the position that while it was sensible to make allowances for some occupations, it would not be consistent with the Home Secretary’s commissioning letter to ignore the quality of the Jobs Plans entirely.

Understanding its importance, the stakeholder engagement we undertook was extensive. This began with a 15-week Call for Evidence, followed by roundtable discussions with employers, government sector leads and representative bodies, and concluded with targeted bilateral engagements (see Chapter 2). We adjusted review timelines to extend the Call for Evidence, created space for further evidence from the Labour Market Evidence Group (LMEG) and accommodated late evidence submissions. We hope this report has demonstrated our willingness to be flexible, open and transparent about our decisions.

More broadly, both ISAC and Skills England suggested that excluding occupations from the TSL would undermine economic growth and business confidence and questioned whether it was worth risking adverse impacts on business for relatively small reductions in net migration in some occupations. We cannot perfectly anticipate the impact on every business, and some will inevitably be adversely affected by the TSL policy design set out in the Immigration White Paper. However, given the scale of migration concerned (0.2% of the workforce in the occupations not recommended for TSL access according to ISAC) we do not anticipate major disruption to growth or Industrial Strategy delivery. Furthermore, we gave opportunities for businesses to make the case for occupations throughout the process and suggest that departing from the evidence after setting out a clear policy principle and assessment process would not be coherent. We were not asked to consider historic visa volumes as a decision-making criterion and so the impact on net migration was purely an outcome of, rather than input into, our considerations.

Laboratory Technicians are the only occupation which ISAC provided occupation-specific arguments for inclusion on the TSL. This focused on the impacts of shortages in specific roles and presented survey data highlighting reports of shortage risk for specific skilled technician labour. This response was appreciated; however we felt the information provided was not sufficient to change our recommendation based on the evidence we had already considered. This also applies to eight other occupations ISAC highlighted as particularly worthy of further consideration but which no new evidence was provided for.

There is an unavoidable short-term trade-off in the government’s objectives of reducing employers’ reliance on migration and reducing risks to the delivery of the Industrial Strategy. The criteria for TSL access are intended to balance this trade-off, providing access to occupations where it is most justified. The recommendations we make are in keeping with these instructions and the spirit of the TSL – to create a time-limited migration route while employers and government improve domestic pipelines – without being unduly harsh. The access criteria set to us by the Home Secretary was clear, and we have undertaken a comprehensive 12-month programme of work to produce recommendations faithful to that brief. Our view is that adding additional occupations would be difficult to justify if the government remains committed to the tests defined in the Immigration White Paper.

Finally, we would like to note that there are some occupations where the Committee agreed the case for TSL access was weakest. These are:

• 3549 ‘Business associate professionals n.e.c.’, 3554 ‘Marketing Associate professionals’, 3556 ‘Sales accounts and business development managers’, 3533 ‘Financial and accounting technicians’, and 3552 ‘Business sales executives’, because these office-based roles appear to rely on relatively generic skills which are more likely to exist within the domestic workforce already or be developed on the job. In 2024/25, visa grants accounted for 0.2% of employment in these five occupations.

• 5231 ‘Vehicle technicians, mechanics and electricians’, primarily as the occupation sits too far outside of the core purpose of the TSL in supporting the Industrial Strategy. Of the occupations we received a Jobs Plans for, Annual Population Survey data showed this occupation to have the lowest proportion of workers employed within the Industrial Strategy sectors (17%), with similar patterns observable within visa data. Analysis of actual sponsorship data also suggested the visas were not being used to support the relevant Industrial Strategy sectors.

3.6 Considerations when implementing our recommendations

Having made the access recommendations above, this section sets out a range of considerations that stakeholders, particularly Home Office and UKVI, need to bear in mind when implementing and monitoring updates to the TSL.

3.6.1 Exploitation risks for construction occupations

Construction occupations present a particular implementation risk for the TSL. The sector has been identified as a higher-risk context for labour exploitation^{[footnote 21]}, and several construction occupations operate in labour markets characterised by subcontracting, fragmented supply chains, SME delivery models and high levels of self-employment. These features can make compliance more challenging and may increase risks for both domestic and migrant workers. In some occupations, elevated visa non-grant rates (sometimes over 70%) also suggest the need for careful monitoring, although this is an imperfect indicator and does not, on its own, demonstrate exploitation or misuse.

We have not treated exploitation risk as a decisive factor in granting TSL access in this review. The evidence available to us does not provide a strong enough basis to rule out individual construction occupations on exploitation grounds alone, particularly where those occupations are relevant to housing, retrofit, building safety, infrastructure or other key delivery priorities. However, this should not be read as an absence of risk.

Rather, it reflects the limitations of the current evidence base and the judgement that, where access is recommended, it should be time-limited and subject to close scrutiny.

Where construction occupations are recommended for TSL access, this should therefore be implemented cautiously. Home Office and UKVI should monitor visa use, non-grant rates, sponsor behaviour, job titles used in applications and any evidence of displacement into broader or more ambiguous SOC codes. For broader construction codes, access should be tightly restricted to the specific job titles for which a case has been made, to reduce the risk of misuse or displacement from other occupations. Any future extension of access should depend not only on continued shortage evidence, but also on clearer evidence that the sector is managing exploitation risks and making progress on domestic workforce actions. When the MAC reviews TSL access in the next iteration, we will continue to consider whether any unusual trends in visa applications may indicate exploitation in at-risk occupations.

3.6.2 Sponsorship challenges

In our Stage 1 TSL report, we explained that the SW sponsorship system is likely to be the only model which could be utilised in the TSL in the near term. However, we noted that not all sectors with occupations that remain in-scope for TSL eligibility are well-suited to the current SW sponsorship model. In construction, reliance on self-employment and subcontracting sits uneasily with the standard employer-employee relationship required for sponsorship. Work is often short-term and project-based, making it difficult for firms to commit to the longer-duration, role-specific sponsorship model. The large share of SMEs in the sector further constrains uptake, as many businesses will lack the administrative capacity to manage sponsor licensing, compliance, and reporting requirements. As a result, even where shortages are recognised, the design of the sponsorship system can act as a binding constraint on access to migrant labour.

In the Digital and Technology sector, constraints arise from firm dynamics and evolving ways of working. Startups and scale-ups face high fixed and ongoing compliance costs that can be disproportionate relative to their size, deterring international recruitment. Hiring is often fast-paced and responsive to changing technologies, meaning that sponsorship requirements and visa processing times risk delaying or preventing hires. In addition, the sector increasingly relies on flexible arrangements — such as remote work, contracting, and project-based teams — which do not fit easily within a system built around a single sponsoring employer and fixed role. Together, these factors suggest that, even where shortages are recognised through mechanisms such as the TSL, the sponsorship model may limit firms’ ability to access global talent.

3.6.3 Interchangeable occupation codes

We recognise that the occupations we recommend for inclusion on the TSL may create incentives for employers to reclassify roles, shifting visa usage for the same job from one occupation code to another.

We can see three main reasons why sponsors may reclassify or misclassify a migrant’s occupation:

1. The relevant RQF 3-5 occupation is no longer TSL-eligible, so the role may be reclassified to another visa-eligible code to enable international recruitment.

2. A similar occupation has lower salary thresholds, creating an incentive to reclassify and reduce pay. This is particularly relevant where TSL thresholds exceed the SW general threshold (or the proposed new entrant rate of £33,400).

3. A similar RQF 6+ occupation allows recruitment on a five-year SW visa (rather than a three-year TSL visa), potentially with more favourable settlement conditions.

To assess the risk that included occupations may absorb demand from excluded ones, we identify occupations requiring similar skills using the O*NET taxonomy and compare their salary thresholds to assess whether misclassification incentives are plausible.

While most jobs clearly sit within one SOC code, this analysis suggests that several office-based occupations with broad job titles, such as logistics managers, financial and accounting technicians, and sales accounts and business development managers, share skill requirements with many RQF 6+ occupations. If the Home Office were to accept the salary thresholds we recommended in our review last year, in some cases salary thresholds would be lower under the SW-eligible occupations than the similar TSL ones. This is particularly significant once our proposed new entrant discount is considered.

For example, an accounting firm could plausibly recruit a 26-year-old accounting technician under the RQF 6+ Chartered Accountant code at a salary around £23,000, lower than the minimum salary for the RQF 3-5 Financial and Accounting Technician role. This illustrates the potential for changes in eligibility and salary thresholds to create opportunities for gaming.

This analysis, alongside UKVI data on changes in non-grant rates following previous removals of occupations from SW eligibility, has informed our recommendations but has not been determinative in any case. Most of the relatively generic office-based occupations have not been recommended for the TSL because they fail the tests we have set out. However, if they had passed the tests, we would likely question their appropriateness because of the generic skillsets and misclassification risks identified.

3.6.4 Monitoring of visa use

In our Stage 1 report, we emphasised that monitoring visa use at the occupation level is essential to ensure the TSL remains targeted and temporary. The report suggested that the Home Office track visa use for TSL occupations and compare this with historical levels, helping to distinguish between genuinely new demand and continuation of existing sponsorship patterns.

Many of the occupations that we are recommending for 18-month TSL access are already on the interim TSL. As a result, if visa usage among these occupations were to suddenly increase beyond historic levels this would be notable and warrant further investigation. Active monitoring is crucial to identifying these trends in a timely manner.

It is worth noting that many of the highest visa using occupations that were deemed crucial to the Industrial Strategy at Stage 1 have failed to pass one of our Stage 2 tests, and they failed for reasons unrelated to their visa usage. Monitoring will also be crucial in understanding whether sponsors who would previously have sought to recruit under these newly ineligible codes, now seek to use alternative occupations to minimise the impact of policy changes on their recruitment strategies.

Outside of the migration system, the Industrial Strategy Unit in DBT and sector leads across government should monitor whether occupations that were proposed for inclusion on the TSL but not included experience shortages that are exacerbated by lack of access to skilled migrants. Our Stage 1 report suggested a formal process where government departments may publicly write to the MAC if there is a significant and exceptional change in circumstances for a particular occupation between full TSL reviews.

3.7 Nation-specific additions to the TSL

The Home Secretary’s commission asked us to consider nation-specific TSLs. At present, there are a small number of Devolved Nation discounts under the Immigration Salary List (ISL) for jobs located in Scotland: 1212 ‘Managers and proprietors in forestry, fishing and related services’ (only “fishing boat masters”), 2111 ‘Chemical scientists’, and 5235 ‘Boat and ship builders and repairers’. In Stage 1 of this review, we noted that devolved TSL access is a very different policy lever from devolved ISL/Shortage Occupation List (SOL) arrangements. This is because the TSL grants access to the immigration system to included occupations, whereas ISL/SOL provides salary discounts and reduced fees^{[footnote 22]} to occupations that already have access to the immigration system. We note that a separate Devolved Nation-only TSL would in effect create geographically bound permissions for a worker that would only be justifiable with a very high evidence bar. For example, a welder in a Wales-only TSL, rather than UK-wide TSL, would only be able to work in Wales and not in the rest of the UK. This creates operational and policy risks where workers can claim to work in Wales but live or work in a different nation.

In Stage 2, we used both quantitative data and stakeholder evidence to support our judgements. Quantitative analysis was produced at sub-UK level, but data limitations meant there was limited scope for that work to impact occupation recommendations. We also encouraged and received evidence from the Devolved Governments and other stakeholders, as well as inviting Devolved Nations to review our conclusions via the LMEG. The evidence received from Devolved Governments covered 18 of the in-scope occupations as well as many out-of-scope occupations (not related to the UK’s Industrial Strategy or not at RQF Level 3-5) and, on the whole, the evidence provided was framed at sector-level rather than specific occupations. In sum, our view is that the data and evidence received did not provide a sufficiently different picture compared to the UK more generally and, on this basis, we do not recommend adding any occupations to TSL lists specific to Devolved Nations at this time. This is because where there was evidence of a shortage in a Devolved Nation, that shortage also existed in the other nations across the UK, strengthening the case for inclusion of occupations in the UK-wide TSL.

The impact of these recommendations is limited for the three occupations that are currently on the Scotland-only ISL. We estimate visa use in these three occupations in Scotland varies. Between July 2024 and June 2025 we estimate the number of out-of-country visa grants in the SW route to sponsors registered in Scotland in the following occupations were: one in 1212 ‘Managers and proprietors in forestry, fishing and related services’, 11 in 2111 ‘Chemical scientists’ and 88 in 5235 ‘Boat and ship builders and repairers’.

Were recommendations in this report to be accepted, only 1212 ‘Managers and proprietors in forestry, fishing and related services’ would not maintain SW route access. This is because this occupation was not deemed as crucial to the UK’s Industrial Strategy in Stage 1 of the TSL review.

The other two affected occupations – 2111 ‘Chemical scientists’ and 5235 ‘Boat and ship builders and repairers’ – would continue to maintain access to the SW route throughout the UK as the former is a RQF 6+ occupation and the latter recommended for 18-month TSL access. Employers making use of Scotland-specific ISL salary threshold discounts could see changes in the salary threshold requirements, but recommendations in our Review of Salary Requirements may limit the impact in some cases.^{[footnote 23]}

We are continuing to work with the Devolved Nations through LMEG to increase the quality of national labour market data and enable improved analysis at the occupation level with greater geographical disaggregation.

Chapter 4: Reflections on the TSL

4.1 Overarching Reflections

Since the 2024 election, the government has increased its focus on linking skills and immigration policy. We have reflected on the merits and challenges of implementing policies in support of this aim, such as in our 2024 Annual Report and our review of professionals in IT and engineering (May 2025). The Immigration White Paper (IWP) set out the objectives of the Temporary Shortage List (TSL) and the role of the Labour Market Evidence Group (LMEG), with the MAC’s TSL commission following in July 2025. Our Stage 1 TSL report (October 2025) advised the Home Office on the design of the TSL, setting out how it could operate as a targeted, time-bound migration route to help address labour shortages in specific occupations crucial to prioritised sectors.

Conducting this inaugural review of the TSL has reduced but not fully resolved some of the prior concerns we had about linking skills and migration via the submission of Jobs Plans. For example, having government sector experts lead the development and submission of Jobs Plans has significantly helped to reduce a potential coordination problem. Overall, we were pleased with the level of external input that sector leads obtained in a limited timeframe and given that this was the first TSL review. This information was supplemented with useful direct responses from key stakeholders. There will continue to be challenges in capturing a very diverse range of views and action across government and sector stakeholders in a single Jobs Plan, but we feel this coordination model broadly worked well and we would replicate it in future Calls for Evidence.

Two related challenges remain. The first relates to free riding, whereby employers in a sector expect others to make the changes that would increase domestic workforce supply, invest in upskilling workers and support a persuasive Jobs Plan. The second, related challenge is how to consider shortages that are driven by multiple factors, for which several actors and exogenous factors are ultimately responsible. For example, if a combination of poor working conditions and low investment in training persists for years to come, to what extent are employers at fault? Poor working conditions and pay are likely to be within the control of employers but if we cannot expect employers to address certain bottlenecks, for example in Further Education (FE) training capacity, should they be penalised if they acted as far as they reasonably could?

There are not simple fixes to these issues but considering track record and observed progress in future reviews, rather than planned actions, will help. Employer-level training and migration data will also tell us whether investment and visas are widespread or concentrated in a very small number of businesses. We are working with LMEG to better understand how bottlenecks in training capacity might be affecting certain sectors and occupations. We can also look at whether actions in the coming years are effective at targeting and reducing the impact of the drivers of shortage identified in the original round of Jobs Plans.

More generally, we hope that future Jobs Plans will be honest in their assessments of how far they have come in addressing the tractable issues while managing factors outside of their control, rather than seeking to allocate blame elsewhere. As per the guidance we issued when launching the Call for Evidence for this review, the best plans will be honest, credible and proportionate, rather than being too optimistic or pessimistic.

4.2 Reflections on Jobs Plans

We recognise that this first iteration of the Jobs Plans process was a significant cross-government undertaking and provided a considerable amount of valuable evidence for this TSL review.

A limitation for this first round of Jobs Plans was that they largely reflected ongoing and pre-committed activity, rather than new actions to reduce shortages in the occupations under review. This is understandable given the timing of this review and given no additional government funding was provided to support initiatives in TSL Jobs Plans. However, sector-led and government activity to support workforce supply into many of these sectors was happening well before the launch of this review, and hundreds of millions of pounds of additional workforce investment has been allocated since the Industrial Strategy was published in July 2025. Irrespective of the publication of the IWP in May 2025, employers and sector representatives have underlying incentives to support domestic workforce supply. For these reasons, the launch of this first TSL review cannot be seen as the starting gun for activity to address workforce shortages, but we do appreciate that this first set of Jobs Plans is largely a synthesis of pre-existing activity and we did not penalise plans because of this.

In terms of creating the first round of Jobs Plans, the template we provided tended to be closely followed, all plans responded to the core questions in the commission, and the allocation of occupations to lead departments generally worked well. Input from external stakeholders, and in some cases from Devolved Nations and regional authorities, helped plans to reflect a broader sector view. However, the process also highlighted five recurring challenges:

4.2.1 Imperfect occupation and skill-level classifications

The review highlighted the limitations of using four-digit Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) codes as the basis for occupation-level assessments. SOC codes are a useful statistical tool, but they do not always reflect how the labour market operates in practice, particularly in dynamic and growing Industrial Strategy sectors. Some important roles or activities cut across multiple occupation codes, while some four-digit occupations are broad and contain a mix of roles with different skill levels, pay levels and labour market dynamics. There is also a risk that removing one occupation from the TSL could displace visa use into adjacent occupations where roles are used somewhat interchangeably.

These classification risks affect several aspects of the work migration system, for example the skill level attributed to a given occupation will affect eligibility for the SW route. The risks are more pertinent for the TSL than the Shortage Occupation List or Immigration Salary List because the TSL determines migration access rather than salary discounts. However, in the absence of a more suitable classification framework, we will continue to make occupation-level assessments using the available SOC structure, while recognising its limitations.

4.2.2 Inconsistent demand estimates

It is inherently difficult to project future labour demand, particularly for occupations linked to fast-moving sectors and long-term Industrial Strategy priorities. However, the Jobs Plans varied considerably in the quality, coverage and consistency of demand estimates. Some occupations considered in this review did not have Skills Needs Assessment (SNA) estimates, while other plans relied on projections produced using different methodologies, time periods and levels of granularity. The methodology behind SNAs also varied significantly between sectors. The variability in methodologies meant it was not clear whether top-down occupational forecasts were compatible with bottom-up sector or project-based estimates, or whether they risked double counting the same underlying demand.

4.2.3 Limited understanding of supply

Many Jobs Plans were weaker on the supply side than on demand. Several plans did not attempt to project domestic supply trends, and relatively few compared expected future demand with the likely supply of suitably skilled workers. Where supply was considered, it was often focused on apprenticeships, partly because apprenticeship data is more readily available and can be mapped more easily to occupations. However, this meant that other routes into occupations, including progression from lower-skilled roles, retraining, FE provision, career changers and retention, were often less fully developed. Most plans namechecked DWP programmes but none gave information on the relevant occupations, employers or regions benefiting from programmes, nor any consideration of impact and whether or how these programmes could be scaled. This matters because the credibility of a Jobs Plan depends not only on whether an occupation is in shortage, but on whether domestic supply can reasonably be expanded, how quickly that could happen, and what barriers may limit progress.

4.2.4 Actions not clearly linked to occupations

The weakest area across Jobs Plans was often the link between identified shortage drivers and the actions proposed to address them. Many plans referred to broad sector reforms, cross-cutting skills policies, funding packages or awareness-raising activity, but did not always explain how these would translate into additional workers in the specific occupations under review. Whilst we understand that policies are not typically designed to target specific occupations, little effort was made to consider the occupations that would benefit from different interventions. This made it difficult to assess whether actions were proportionate to the scale of shortage, whether they addressed the main barriers identified in the evidence, and whether they were likely to reduce reliance on migration over time.

We do not think broad or sector-wide actions should be disregarded. In many cases, action at sector level will be necessary, particularly where shortages are linked to long-standing issues such as FE capacity, employer investment, training infrastructure or perceptions of the sector. It is clear that for some sectors a significant amount of investment is occurring at the sector-wide level, however this sector-wide action did not filter down into specific actions in Jobs Plans.

4.2.5 Misinterpretation of metrics and role of the TSL

Finally, some Jobs Plans used evidence or metrics in ways that did not support the case being made. For example, high visa use was sometimes presented as a clear signal of shortage, without acknowledging that migration flows are also affected by the design of the immigration system, international labour supply and employer recruitment choices. Many plans cited competition for workers with other sectors as evidence of shortage, but did not always explain why wages, working conditions or efforts to train workers were not sufficient to better utilise domestic workers.

Overall, the first round of Jobs Plans provided a useful foundation for linking skills and migration policy in a more structured way. The process worked best where plans were honest about uncertainty, clear on the drivers of shortage, and specific with the actions being taken. Future reviews should build on this by asking for stronger links between demand, supply, shortage drivers and proposed interventions, with greater clarity on scale, timing, expected impact and past results.

4.3 Future reviews of the TSL

4.3.1 Full TSL reviews

Our Stage 1 report (page 9) proposed that full TSL reviews should be conducted every three years, striking a balance between stability for employers and responsiveness. Having access for three years provides some certainty for employers (allowing them the ability to plan), while providing regular opportunity for occupations to be added or removed depending on how circumstances and labour market conditions change.

We recommended that full TSL reviews consider the same criteria as this initial review but with a closer focus on whether Jobs Plans have been effective, or if external factors have affected progress. While we cannot expect planned actions such as new training routes to be fully scaled by the time of the next full review, we would hope to see tangible progress, particularly on the actions that have been committed to in published Sector Plans and the first round of Jobs Plans. Employers and drafters of Jobs Plans should therefore ensure they can demonstrate progress by monitoring roll-out and impact. If barriers such as FE training capacity continue to be real barriers to domestic workforce supply, TSL access will likely have to be extended before the case for migration will ease.

We will also look for signs of progress in key metrics, such as wages, diversity, apprenticeship starts and Skills England data tracking starts on priority courses.

Future commissions for full TSL reviews may ask us to review the list of Regulatory Qualification Framework (RQF) 3-5 occupations relevant to the Industrial Strategy and critical infrastructure.

We will continue to seek feedback on how this first review has been conducted and set out further guidance on how we intend to conduct the next full review nearer the time. As suggested in our Stage 1 report (page 9), we recommend the Home Office define a formal process for making updates to the TSL outside of full reviews. This should involve government departments publicly submitting evidence to the MAC and explaining why circumstances have significantly changed since the last full TSL review. These requests would only be considered under exceptional circumstances.

4.3.2 Extending 18-month access

This review has recommended 28 occupations for 18-month TSL access. This is intended as an exceptional measure for this review and in future we would expect to recommend access for either a full three-year period or not at all. Ahead of the 18-month period expiring, we propose reviewing if Jobs Plans have been improved and access should be extended to three years. We would intend this to be a lighter-touch process than the full review, acknowledging the amount of evidence we already have, and the significant work required to develop Jobs Plans.

If our recommendations are accepted by the Home Office, we would expect the group of 28 occupations to receive access from January 2027 to the end of June 2028. To ensure continuity, the MAC could, subject to a Home Office commission, review Jobs Plans received in October 2027 and provide recommendations to the Home Office in early 2028, so that any extensions or other changes to the TSL could be implemented in Immigration Rules changes in spring 2028.

We would intend this process to be open to the 28 occupations that are recommended for TSL access but need to improve Jobs Plans to extend access from 18 months to three years. All other occupations will be reconsidered for access at the next full TSL review in three years’ time.^{[footnote 24]}

Given the number of occupations recommended for 18-month access and needing to be reviewed outside the recommended three-year TSL cycle, we propose this exercise focuses on targeted updates to address the limitations of Jobs Plans submitted to the MAC in February 2026. Specifically, improving the planned actions within Jobs Plans through:

1. Clearer linking of actions to the drivers of shortage. For example, if retention or pay is a major challenge, the Jobs Plan should comment on whether and how that is being addressed by the sector.

2. Consideration of the magnitude and timing of the impact of actions. Spending commitments such as the construction, technology and engineering skills “packages” announced in the Industrial Strategy (page 68) should be considered in terms of what that money is buying and the impact that will have on workforce supply over time. Together these three packages represent over £800 million of spending yet we received little detail on the intended impact they will have (i.e. how many people will they train or upskill, and to what extent that will fill any shortages). Thought should be given to the extent that interventions such as work experience for young people or efforts to improve perceptions of the sector will translate into workforce supply, and over what time period. If the intended impact has not already been appraised by government prior to allocating funding, the expected impact should be openly discussed in Jobs Plans, for example whether a new initiative will translate into tens, hundreds or thousands of additional people joining the workforce each year. Plans also need to consider the timing of impact, for example whether it will be immediate or delayed, all at once or gradual.

Setting out the above, with targeted actions linked to intended outputs and impacts, will significantly strengthen the credibility of Jobs Plans. It will also support industry and government (and the MAC) with monitoring the effectiveness of interventions and allow better evaluation of whether and why actions had the intended impact. This, in turn, will support future workforce planning.

We will be happy to provide detailed feedback to those who submitted Jobs Plans for this inaugural TSL review and will provide fuller detail over the coming months to help early preparations for future reviews. Where possible, we will also draw on the sector-level Jobs Plans which the government are publishing over the course of this year, in the same way we have drawn on the published Clean Energy Jobs Plan for this review.

Chapter 5: Conclusion

In July 2025, responding to an increase in economic migration to the UK particularly into low- and middle-skilled jobs, the UK’s principal work migration route was restricted to graduate-level occupations. To balance these new restrictions with the need to support the UK’s Industrial Strategy, the government introduced the Temporary Shortage List (TSL), allowing certain mid-skilled occupations which are key to the Industrial Strategy to retain access to the immigration system. These occupations typically have shorter training times than graduate-level roles. The TSL is also intended to respond to an environment of falling domestic training and an increasing number of UK residents not in work, by encouraging employers to increase recruitment from the domestic workforce in the medium term. In all, the TSL performs a delicate balancing act between several competing policy objectives: reducing employers’ reliance on migration, supporting the Industrial Strategy and incentivising domestic hiring.

Despite the complexity of the policy context, the Home Secretary’s commissioning letter was clear on the necessary criteria for TSL access. Inclusion requires an occupation be crucial to the Industrial Strategy or delivering critical infrastructure, have clear evidence of workforce shortages, a credible, ambitious strategy to maximise use of the domestic workforce, and a commitment to manage exploitation. In the process of making our recommendations, we have reviewed these conditions sequentially and transparently, providing as much guidance and opportunity for stakeholder input as possible. Our Stage 1 report assessed the significance of occupations to the Industrial Strategy or critical infrastructure, streamlining the list of occupations to provide clarity and focus for further engagement in Stage 2. Stage 2 applied the subsequent tests to make our final recommendations in this report.

Our recommendations are defined by the framework set out to us in the commissioning letter and the government’s Immigration White Paper. In line with the commissioning letter, we have sought to be pragmatic, conscious that this is the first time this exercise has been conducted, and of the risk that high-priority sectors could be deprived of labour which stifles their growth. This led to recommending more occupations for 18-month access (28) than we would in future reviews if we received the same level of evidence and if the government continues to take the position that a credible Jobs Plan is a pre-requisite to TSL access. No occupations provided a strong enough case to merit full three-year TSL access.

We appreciate Labour Market Evidence Group (LMEG) feedback and thank them for their input throughout the TSL review. Ultimately, the recommendations we make have adhered closely to the instructions of the commissioning letter and the spirit of the TSL, but we acknowledge there is an unavoidable short-term trade-off in the government’s objectives of reducing employer reliance on migration and ensuring delivery of the Industrial Strategy.

In future reviews we hope to receive materially improved Jobs Plans. We will support this through sharing overall reflections (see Section 4), providing specific feedback to government departments where requested and distributing further guidance. This is not to say that this iteration of the TSL has not been a success. We are greatly appreciative of the work invested by government departments and feel the cross-government and industry collaboration has been a marked improvement on the process undertaken for previous immigration shortage lists – something reflected in the much higher calibre of evidence received.

We look forward to reviewing the progress made by occupations, particularly on actions that have been committed to in published Sector Plans and the first round of Jobs Plans. We will continue to work with LMEG, other government departments, and external stakeholders to ensure future TSL reviews are as effective as possible in driving the government’s objectives.

Annex 1: Methods and data used in quantitative analysis

We used quantitative data analysis to support our assessment of the 46 occupations for which Temporary Shortage List (TSL) Jobs Plans were received. Analysis supported each of the four tests considered in the second stage of the TSL review.

This annex explains the theory underpinning each piece of quantitative analysis and outlines methods and sources used.

Across all analysis there are common themes:

• Quantitative analysis was considered alongside the evidence gathered through the Call for Evidence (CfE) and subsequent stakeholder engagement. Occupational assessments were not made using quantitative analysis alone. Data was primarily used as contextual information alongside wider evidence rather than used as a discrete pass or fail test. In general, more weight was put on the evidence received via the CfE and subsequent stakeholder engagement, mirroring our approach in Stage 1 of using data and expert input to determine relevance to the priority sectors.
• Data is at best a proxy for understanding the trends and the discussion of the theory motivating analysis below is not exhaustive. Discussion below focuses on the core theory behind the analysis but wider factors may also be relevant. For example, indexed trends in median hourly earnings are used as above-average wage growth could demonstrate improvements in attraction or retention of staff. Above-average wage growth could also demonstrate potential ‘catch-up’ from a lower wage starting point but this is not included when outlining why the metric was used. We considered such limitations and alternative interpretations in detail but they are not comprehensively summarised in this annex.
• Interpretation of indexed trends focused on the broad picture and more recent data points. Where indexed trends were used, stronger trends would show consistent differentiation from the UK average across the 2019 to 2025 data period. Where these are not present greater emphasis is placed on outcomes towards the end of the 2019 to 2025 data period.
• Quantitative analysis was produced at sub-UK level, in particular to support assessments at Devolved Nation level. In practical terms, geographical disaggregation was investigated but smaller sample sizes at sub-UK level limited the feasibility of use across all occupations. As such, quantitative analysis below UK level did not materially impact occupation recommendations and we balanced that through direct engagement with stakeholders in the Devolved Nations (see the methodology chapter and annex on the CfE method).

The remainder of this annex discusses specific analysis used in assessing occupations and provides notes on data sources used.

Test 1: Is the occupation currently in shortage or likely to be in shortage in the near future?

The following shortage indicators focus on recent and current shortage, with information on expectations for the near future gathered via the CfE process and subsequent stakeholder engagement.

Indexed trends in median hourly earnings

Theory: Employers facing shortages may be expected to increase wages to help attract and retain staff. Indexed trends for an occupation are compared to indexed trends for the UK overall, and where occupational trends are above UK trends (i.e. above-average) this is interpreted as an indicator of shortage.

Data and methods: Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) data for 2019 to 2025 was used to produce indexed trends for median hourly earnings. 2019 and 2020 ASHE data was drawn from internal analysis of ASHE micro-data, after undertaking analysis to allow estimates for 2019 and 2020 to be output in Standard Occupation Classification (SOC) 2020 terms. ASHE micro-data was converted from SOC 2010 to SOC 2020 terms using Office for National Statistics (ONS) SOC 2010 to SOC 2020 relationship tables. The standard ASHE filter for weekly or hourly earnings analysis and weighting using the ‘calwght’ variable were applied as specified by ONS documentation.^{[footnote 25]} Cases with fewer than 30 unweighted counts were excluded from outputs. 2021 to 2025 data was read from Table 14.5a of ASHE data as published by the ONS and followed exclusions as published by the ONS. Trends were indexed against 2019.

Indexed trends in median weekly hours worked

Theory: Employers facing shortages may make more use of existing labour through offering overtime. Indexed trends in median weekly hours worked were used similarly to median hourly earnings.

Data and methods: ASHE data is used similarly to median hourly earnings, noting published ASHE data is taken from Table 14.9a.

Indexed trends in volume of job adverts per 100 employees (Job Advert Intensity)

Theory: Employers facing shortages may increase recruitment activity to increase hiring, which may be reflected in the volume of job adverts in an occupation. Indexed trends in job adverts per 100 employees in an occupation are compared to indexed trends for the UK overall. Above-average indexed trend growth is interpreted as indicating higher-than-average recruitment activity and therefore suggestive of shortage. The metric used helps mitigate the risk that measuring hiring activity alone is an imperfect proxy of hiring difficulty, as the focus on indexed trends per 100 employees places hiring activity in the context of occupation size.

Data and methods: Newly posted job advert volumes in April in each year from 2019 to 2025 were extracted from Lightcast in October 2025. As the source is updated frequently, figures may change if extracted from the source at a later date. April is chosen to align with the data collection time period for ASHE data on employee volumes. These volumes are estimated via internal analysis of ASHE micro-data rather than published volumes.^{[footnote 26]} Relative to published data we made amendments to the standard ASHE filter to limit filtering only to elements needed for estimating employee volumes.^{[footnote 27]} Weighting, SOC 2010 to SOC 2020 conversion and suppression of low unweighted counts follow the method as specified in the description of analysis of median hourly earnings.

Indexed trends in job advert duration (Job Advert Duration)

Theory: Employers facing shortages may see job adverts stay open for longer as they struggle to find applicants for roles. As such, where indexed trends for job advert durations are above the UK-wide average, they may indicate above-average recruitment difficulties or shortage.

Data and methods: Median job advert durations for newly posted job adverts in each calendar year from 2019 to 2025 were extracted from Lightcast in February 2026. As the source is updated frequently, figures may change if extracted at a later date. As there is no need to scale by employee volumes in this indicator, analysis considered full calendar years.

Test 2: Does the occupation have a credible and targeted plan to maximise use of the domestic workforce?

This test assesses what could be driving shortages and if credible actions are in place to address those drivers of shortage. Evidence gathered via the CfE process and subsequent stakeholder engagement was substantive to decision making whereas quantitative analysis was peripheral.

Test 3: Are risks of abuse or exploitation being managed?

As noted in the main body of this report, information to assess this question was limited and we relied on expert input from organisations including the Director of Labour Market enforcement (now part of the Fair Work Agency). Quantitative analysis was able to provide some insight on immigration system risk, through analysis of Home Office management information provided by UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI) on non-grant rates of visa applications at occupational level.

Non-grant rate in visa applications

Theory: Visa applications may end up not being granted, with data reviewed separating visa applicants into those issued, refused, or withdrawn. An application may be withdrawn by the applicant after being notified of UKVI requesting further information on the application, suggesting potential reluctance to have an application reviewed in more detail, while large volumes of refusals may highlight systemic low-quality applications linked to an occupation. It is not possible to discern from this data whether applicants are making lower-quality applications accidentally or with awareness of weaknesses.

Data and methods: UKVI provided data on application volumes and non-grant volumes for out-of-country applications from July 2024 to December 2025 by occupation for main applicants in SW and Health and Care Worker (H&CW) visa routes. Non-grant rates were calculated taking non-grant volumes as a share of total application volumes. Non grant rates in an occupation were then compared to the average across the SW and H&CW visa routes. Substantially higher-than-average non-grant rates in an occupation were interpreted as an indication of risk in the immigration system. We would welcome UKVI developing a more direct measure of exploitation such as the share of cases at an occupation level linked to activity explicitly breaking Immigration Rules or other criminal activity.

For occupations which lost eligibility^{[footnote 28]} to sponsored work visa routes in July 2025 and for which a Jobs Plan was received, the period July 2024 to June 2025 is used. For other occupations, the full July 2024 to December 2025 data period is used.

An additional piece of analysis examines occupations that retained eligibility following July 2025 Immigration Rules, comparing non-grant rates in July to December 2024 and July to December 2025. Analysis assessed where large increases at an occupation level may be seen. This was interpreted as an indication of potential displaced activity from applicants who previously used an occupation code no longer eligible following July 2025 Immigration Rules changes.

Test 4: Is TSL access appropriate, given the nature of the occupation, type of shortage and potential risks?

This test sought to assess if a) there is a logical argument for visa route access as a solution to shortage, b) if previous visa route usage or occupational structure suggests employers would make use of visa route access within the sponsorship framework, or c) if there are any wider factors that may influence visa route access.

Quantitative analysis focusses on b) and c) in the list above.

Sponsorship Framework - Historical visa usage

Theory: Occupations seeing some historical visa usage provides a clear indication of ability and willingness of employers to use the sponsorship system and make use of visa access. Previous visa usage does not in itself indicate whether there is a shortage or not. High visa use could result from a shortage of domestic workers but also from employers relying too heavily on the visa system.

Data and methods: Published immigration statistics for 2022/23 and 2023/24 were converted to SOC 2020 terms using SOC 2010 to SOC 2020 relationship tables. A proxy for 2024/25 data was estimated using published data for Q4 2024, Q1 2025 and Q2 2025 already published in SOC 2020 terms, and scaling the sum of grants across those three quarters to approximate annual grants. It is noted that Q2 2025 lies outside of the 2024/25 year but was used in the absence of published data for Q2 2024 and Q3 2024 at four-digit SOC level. Employee volumes and estimates of new hires^{[footnote 29]} in a year were provided by ASHE micro-data analysis for each of 2023, 2024 and 2025 and where sample sizes were robust enabled estimates of visas per 100 employees and visas per 100 new hires.

Sponsorship Framework - Self-employment share

Theory: Occupations with high shares of self-employment may benefit less from TSL visa route access given the employer sponsorship framework precludes self-employment within the TSL visa route.

Data and methods: Annual Population Survey data pooled across 2022-2024 was used to estimate the weighted volumes and share of workers who are self-employed in each occupation. Occupations with unweighted counts below 30 were excluded in analysis.

Sponsorship Framework – Disproportionate visa use

Theory: Where five-firm concentration ratios (i.e. the share of visa grants accounted for by the largest five sponsors in each occupation) are disproportionately large, this may highlight a minority of employers in an occupation using the migration system when other employers make alternative choices.

Data and methods: Home Office management information provided insight into out-of-country visa grants between July 2024 and June 2025 in the SW and H&CW visa routes, with information from Certificates of Sponsorship (CoS) matched to visa grants data using CoS number and Sponsor License Numbers as matching variables. The resulting dataset was used to identify the volume of out-of-country visa grants in an occupation in that 12-month period, and the volume and shares of those visa grants associated with each sponsor. The five-firm concentration ratio was calculated and filtered to include occupations where total out-of-country visa grants in the 12-month period was 100 or greater. Where this identified occupations with a five-firm concentration ratio in visa grants of at least 50%, this was compared against ASHE data estimating five-firm concentration ratios in the occupation overall.^{[footnote 30]}

Wider Factors - Pay in Industrial Strategy sectors vs outside of Industrial Strategy sectors

Theory: As Industrial Strategy sectors are noted for “their potential to create well-paid jobs across the UK” (page 115), an additional metric looked to identify if pay within Industrial Strategy sectors is competitive with other sectors. Competitive pay demonstrates that actions to attract and retain workers have been explored by Industrial Strategy employers in an occupation, increasing confidence that TSL access is appropriate.

Data and methods: Industrial Strategy sectors are defined using the published Industrial Strategy Sector Definitions. These definitions note limitations in the ability to use Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) 2007, for example that SIC 2007 may not “capture the detail and fast-changing nature of (a) sector”, “many SIC codes are too high-level to define activity”, and definitions will be tested and iterated over time. As such, the quantitative analysis relies on imperfect proxies for sector definitions. Median hourly pay by sector and occupation in ASHE data is used in this analysis, looking at median hourly pay differentials in 2025 and the average across 2019-2025 for Industrial Strategy sectors vs outside of Industrial Strategy overall, and for specific Industrial Strategy sectors where data allows robust analysis. Analysis looks to identify where pay in an occupation within the defined Industrial Strategy sector(s) is less than 95% or more than 105% of that outside the defined sector(s).

Wider Factors – Occupational substitutability

Theory: Where occupational definitions are broad, there may be more room for a job role to fall within multiple occupations, and our recommendations may create incentives for sponsors to reclassify roles under new codes. We can see three main reasons why sponsors may reclassify a migrant’s occupation:

1. The relevant Regulatory Qualification Framework (RQF) 3–5 occupation is no longer TSL-eligible, so the role may be reclassified to another visa-eligible code to enable international recruitment.
2. A similar occupation has lower salary thresholds, creating an incentive to reclassify and reduce pay. This is particularly relevant where TSL thresholds exceed the Skilled Worker (SW) general threshold (or the proposed new entrant rate of £33,400).
3. A similar RQF 6+ occupation allows recruitment on a five-year SW visa (rather than a three-year TSL visa), potentially with more favourable settlement conditions.

Data and methods: To assess which occupations are most likely to absorb demand from RQF 3–5 occupations, we constructed a skills profile for each occupation using the O*NET skills taxonomy of the required competency levels for important skills. We then calculated cosine similarity scores between all occupation pairs to identify those with comparable important skills profiles. For occupations with high similarity, we compared salary thresholds to assess whether differences create a financial incentive to reclassify job roles or at least do not act as a barrier. This approach produced a set of occupations that share similar skill requirements and have comparable or lower salary thresholds than those under consideration in Stage 2.

Where an occupation under consideration in Stage 2 had many such counterparts, this suggested its skills profile is relatively generic and therefore more susceptible to substitution.

Data notes and limitations

This final section provides more information on specific data sources.

Annual Population Survey (APS) from the ONS

The Annual Population Survey (APS) is the largest continuous household survey covering the UK. As a sample survey, it provides estimates of population characteristics, rather than exact measures.

The micro-data estimates calculated using recent APS data to estimate self-employment are subject to heightened volatility due to ongoing data quality challenges which the ONS are working on. The ongoing challenges with response rates, weighting approach and other aspects of the survey mean APS-based labour market statistics are currently considered ‘official statistics in development’ until further review.

Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) from the ONS

Outputs from ASHE data maintain accredited official statistics status. The achieved ASHE sample in 2025 was 174,000. The ASHE sample size was reduced during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic because of the challenges to data collection, from around 180,000 each year to less than 150,000 in 2020, 2021 and 2022.

The ASHE sample size started recovering in 2023 and is now at its highest since 2019. Nevertheless, data limitations remain and the ONS have noted discrepancies between ASHE and other earnings data, with ongoing methodological improvements planned.

SOC 2010 to SOC 2020 conversion

SOC 2010 to SOC 2020 conversion is based on published ONS SOC 2010 to SOC 2020 relationship tables. These provide an assumed share of each SOC 2010 occupation that relates to their SOC 2020 equivalent(s). Analysis applied these shares to SOC 2010 volumes to estimate SOC 2020 equivalent volumes. SOC 2010 to SOC 2020 conversion is used for ASHE datasets in 2019 and 2020, and visa grant volumes for 2022/23 and 2023/24.

Estimates which use this conversion may not represent actual outcomes if those statistics were recorded using SOC 2020.

Home Office management information

Home Office management information provides insight into visa applications and grants. Whilst population-wide data, matching and data cleaning processes are undertaken which can mean some cases are dropped from analysis, and all analysis is subject to the data quality of available variables.

For example, data quality may limit the ability to undertake analysis by sponsor size. In theory if a single employer sponsors a large number of workers relative to the size of its workforce, this may warrant further scrutiny. However, we are not confident that the management information is accurately capturing firm size. Data improvements, for example using linked HMRC or Interdepartmental Business Register data, may give a more accurate picture for monitoring purposes.

For the July 2024 to June 2025 data constructed for this analysis, matching CoS data to visa grants data resulted in a match rate over 98%. This represents a strong overall match rate but note that non-match rates were disproportionately higher for visa grants in July – September 2024 and disproportionately lower for visa grants in April – June 2025. Given non-matches account for a small share, this non-match skew likely has minimal impact on results.

Job advert data from Lightcast

Lightcast allows extraction of data on online job adverts. As the collation of job advert data relies on web scraping, there may be inherent coverage issues. For example, coverage may be less complete where job availability is spread via word of mouth more than online adverts and this may impact some occupations more than others. We are aware the ONS uses an alternative provider of online job advert data and make no assumption that one source is better than another in this area, but institutional experience in Lightcast made it the preferred source for this review. As a live database, data extracted at a point in time from Lightcast may not match extracts at a later date.

Annex 2: Call for Evidence and stakeholder engagement methodology

The Call for Evidence

Overview of process

As outlined in Chapter 2, the Call for Evidence (CfE) ran between 17 October 2025 and 2 February 2026. The process was split across two questionnaires, one for the government organisations submitting the core Jobs Plans, and one for representative bodies submitting additional information. In the first instance, representative bodies were encouraged to engage with government sector leads to help support Jobs Plans, with the second questionnaire allowing representative bodies to submit additional evidence that sits outside of the core Jobs Plan.

In total we received Jobs Plans from government departments for 46 occupations, 31 responses through the representative body questionnaire, and a further 16 email submissions.

We primarily used the evidence within these submissions to help support and contextualise the evaluation of the Jobs Plans submitted by UK government sector leads. External submissions were a rich source of local detail, particularly regarding the evidence and impact of shortage. In addition to this, many respondents consented to take part in further research. We were thus able to utilise these respondents as an additional pool of potential participants for our roundtables, helping to ensure that a range of sectors and geographical locations were represented.

For copies of the questionnaire templates and guidance, please see the attachments listed on the Call for Evidence webpage.

Overview of evidence received from representative bodies

This section presents the characteristics of the organisations who responded to the online representative bodies CfE questionnaire and provides a summary paragraph on the types of organisations who separately emailed in submissions. A more thorough overview of the core Jobs Plans submitted by government sector experts is contained within Chapter 2.

The small number of responses, as well as the self-selecting nature of the sample, limits more detailed quantitative analysis, and means that the results of this CfE cannot be generalised.

31 organisations completed the online CfE of which three were not representative bodies: two of these were part of the Creative Industries and the other organisation was part of the Advanced Manufacturing sector.

Geography

Of the 31 online responses received, the most common organisational spread of an organisation was UK-wide (21). The remaining 10 organisations were largely evenly spread across the UK, including representation across all of the Devolved Nations.

Sector

Organisations responded from across all of the nine prioritised sectors in scope. Table A2.1, below, outlines the number of responses we received for each of the industrial strategy sectors plus the Foundational Industries/Critical infrastructure sector. To arrive at these response counts, we pre-assigned certain SOC 2020 Codes to each sector. The categorisation of SOC 2020 codes was done collaboratively with government departments. Interestingly, when organisations self-identified the sectors they belonged to within our CfE, there was sometimes a misalignment between the sector we had assigned a SOC code to and the one they operated within, highlighting how some SOC codes sit across multiple sectors.

Many of the responses submitted evidence on more than one SOC code. Therefore, across the 31 submissions, respondents submitted evidence on 64 of the 82 occupations in scope for Stage 2 of our review. In total, they made 167 separate cases for occupations to be included on the Temporary Shortage List (TSL), with several occupations argued for by multiple respondents. The number of responses we received also varied between sectors. Advanced Manufacturing had a significantly higher number of responses with 43 submissions whereas Defence only has one submission.

Table A2.1: Count of occupation submissions in the online CfE, by priority sector

Sector Lead	Count
Advanced Manufacturing	43
Clean Energy	11
Creative Industries	13
Defence	1
Digital and Technology	32
Financial Services	4
Foundational Industries/Critical infrastructure	43
Life Sciences	9
Professional and Business Services	8
No Lead	3
Total	167

Overview of additional email submissions

In addition to the CfE representative questionnaire, we also received 16 separate email submissions from representative organisations and Devolved Nations which were also examined as part of occupation reviewing. Across these 16 emails, 50 separate occupations were argued for. These occupations covered all of the prioritised sectors, with the exception of Financial Services.

Additional evidence examined

As well as the Jobs Plans, representative CfE submissions, and email submissions, over the course of our commission we also utilised the knowledge within a wide variety of existing publications and reports. These included high-level resources which covered multiples occupations and sectors (for example DfE Apprenticeships statistics and Labour market and skills projections, the Skills England Occupations in demand work, or the Northern Ireland Skills Barometer), as well as ones more focussed on specific occupations or sectors. The below is a non-exhaustive list of the latter:

• Advanced Manufacturing Sector Plan (UK government)
• Aerospace manufacturing in 2025 (Royal Aeronautical Society)
• Assessment of the clean energy skills challenge (UK government)
• Clean Energy Industries Sector Plan (UK government)
• Clean energy jobs plan (UK government)
• Creative Industries Sector Plan (UK government)
• Defence Industrial Strategy 2025: Making Defence an Engine for Growth (UK government)
• Digital and Technologies Sector Plan (UK government)
• Financial Services Growth and Competitiveness Strategy (UK government)
• Green Skills for the Future Report (Institute of The Motor Industry)
• Growing a Skills Pipeline for the UK Electronics Sector (UK Electronics Skills Foundation)
• Life Sciences Sector Plan (UK government)
• Life Sciences 2035: Developing the Skills for Future Growth (Futures Group)
• UK Quantum Skills Taskforce Report (UK government)
• Don’t fail to scale: seizing the opportunity of engineering biology (House of Lords)
• Skills England: Driving growth and widening opportunities (UK government)
• Sectoral Skills Assessment – Life Sciences (Skills Development Scotland)
• Skills Investment Plan for Scotland’s life and chemical sciences (Skills Development Scotland)
• National Infrastructure Commission: Electricity distribution networks: Creating capacity for the future (UK government)
• National Shipbuilding Office (UK government)
• Nuclear Skills Plan
• Professional and Business Services Sector Plan (UK government)
• The State of Wellbeing in 2026 (Make UK)
• Warm Homes Skills Programme (UK government)

Stakeholder Engagement

As part of this review, we held external stakeholder engagements with employers, trade representatives and trade unions after the CfE. We also held targeted bilaterals and small group discussions on occupations not covered in the initial roundtables. The below is a list of external stakeholders who joined these sessions:

Roundtable attendees:

• HVM Catapult
• Prospect
• Jaguar Land Rover
• GME Services
• MAKEUK
• British Airways
• EDF Energy
• Cogent Skills
• Renewable UK
• SSE
• EU Skills
• Balfour Beatty
• Northern Ballet
• Amazon
• Association of British Orchestras
• Bectu
• Work Advance
• Skills Development Scotland
• Roslin CT
• Association of Accounting Technicians
• Builders UK
• Home Builders Federation (HBF)
• Unite the Union
• Building Engineering Services Association
• Build UK
• GMB Union
• RA Engineering
• Universities and Colleges Employers Association

Other stakeholders:

• Design Council
• Institute of the Motor Industry
• AstraZeneca
• BioIndustry Association
• Centre for Process Innovation/Catapult
• Construction Industry Training Board
• One Dance
• UK Chamber of Shipping
• Society of Motor Manufacturers and Trader

Annex 3: Occupation recommendations

The following tables summarise background data, whether occupations are on the interim Temporary Shortage List (TSL) or the Immigration Salary List (ISL), and the rationale behind our recommendations. We have grouped summaries according to recommended TSL access or the reason for not recommending access.

Contextual data is presented for each occupation. Please note data presented on the volume of employees is based on analysis of Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings 2025 data and data for the share of employees estimated to be UK nationals is based on analysis of Annual Population Survey 2022-2024 pooled data. This means these figures should be read independently of each other. Visa usage is based on the average for out-of-country visa grants in these occupations across 2022/23 to 2024/25, noting processes as outlined in Annex 1. More information on sources and use of data is included in Annex 1.

1. Occupations recommended for provisional 18-month access

1.1 Advanced Manufacturing (18 months)

The following tables cover:

• 3112 Electrical and electronics technicians
• 3113 Engineering technicians
• 5211 Sheet metal workers
• 5213 Welding Trades
• 5221 Metal machining setters and setter-operators
• 5223 Metal working production and maintenance fitters
• 5235 Boat and ship builders and repairers

Occupation: 3112 Electrical and electronics technicians

Lead sector: Advanced Manufacturing

Immigration system context

Annual visas (three-year average): 73

Interim TSL: Yes

ISL: No

Labour market background

Employees (2025): 17,000

UK nationals % (2022 - 2024): 95%

Recommendation

Recommend access for 18 months.

Though the evidence of historical shortage is relatively mild, there are signs of growth and increasing future demand. There are two Jobs Plans for this occupation: the core Advanced Manufacturing plan from DBT, and a supplementary Jobs Plan from DSIT covering the use of this occupation in semiconductor and quantum frontiers. Though the actions within these are not overwhelmingly strong, they do broadly align with the drivers of shortage and so are relatively better than other plans. The occupation has clear links to the Industrial Strategy, with over 50% of employees in the occupation being employed in Industrial Strategy or critical infrastructure sectors, and otherwise appears sensible for inclusion.

Occupation: 3113 Engineering technicians

Lead sector: Advanced Manufacturing

Immigration system context

Annual visas (three-year average): 363

Interim TSL: Yes

ISL: No

Labour market background

Employees (2025): 100,000

UK nationals % (2022 - 2024): 92%

Recommendation

Recommend access for 18 months.

There is some evidence of historical shortage, in particular pay data was consistently (though only marginally) above the UK trend, and there is evidence that demand for this occupation will grow in the future. There are two Jobs Plans for this occupation: the core Advanced Manufacturing plan from DBT, and a supplementary Jobs Plan from DSIT covering the use of this occupation in semiconductor and quantum frontiers. Though the actions in these are not overwhelmingly strong, in comparison to others, they contain acceptable actions. There are some considerations about whether TSL access is appropriate: in particular, a proportion of this occupation work in the construction sector which has a higher risk of exploitation (though the vast majority of roles are outside of construction), and the potential overlap with other occupations which are on the Skilled Worker (SW) route, given similar skillsets required.

Occupation: 5211 Sheet metal workers

Lead sector: Advanced Manufacturing

Immigration system context

Annual visas (three-year average): 60

Interim TSL: No

ISL: No

Labour market background

Employees (2025): 9,000

UK nationals % (2022 - 2024): 98%

Recommendation

Recommend access for 18 months.

Although the evidence is somewhat mixed, there are some signs of shortage, particularly in job adverts data, and relatively high replacement demand given high turnover in the occupation. The actions are primarily sector- rather than occupation-specific but do generally align with the drivers of shortage that were identified. Only a minority of workers in this occupation seem to be employed in the Industrial Strategy sectors, but a reasonable argument was made to link this occupation to key Industrial Strategy areas. This occupation sits within a group of four other metalworking occupations in Advanced Manufacturing. There is some minor variation in the strength of their cases but, on balance, having different TSL access for just one of these occupations could risk driving unintended behaviours among employers. The recommendation therefore sits in line with these related occupations to provide a more consistent approach.

Occupation: 5213 Welding trades

Lead sector: Advanced Manufacturing

Immigration system context

Annual visas (three-year average): 365

Interim TSL: Yes

ISL: Yes

Labour market background

Employees (2025): 46,000

UK nationals % (2022 - 2024): 85%

Recommendation

Recommend access for 18 months.

There was evidence of shortage, particularly the job adverts data, with wage data also slightly above the UK trend, and data suggest labour demand will continue to grow. The actions were primarily sector- rather than occupation-specific but did have some stronger industry-led actions. This occupation sits within a group of four other metalworking occupations in Advanced Manufacturing. There is some minor variation in the strength of their cases but, on balance, having different TSL access for just one of these occupations could risk driving unintended behaviours among employers. The recommendation therefore sits in line with these related occupations to provide a more consistent approach.

Occupation: 5221 Metal machining setters and setter-operators

Lead sector: Advanced Manufacturing

Immigration system context

Annual visas (three-year average): 60

Interim TSL: No

ISL: No

Labour market background

Employees (2025): 55,000

UK nationals % (2022 - 2024): 86%

Recommendation

Recommend access for 18 months.

There is evidence of shortage, particularly in the job adverts data, as well as evidence of growth in the future and reasonable replacement demand. The actions are primarily sector- rather than occupation-specific but had some explanation on how these could benefit this occupation and contained industry-led actions. This occupation sits within a group of four other metalworking occupations in Advanced Manufacturing. There is some minor variation in the strength of their cases but, on balance, having different TSL access for just one of these occupations could risk driving unintended behaviours among employers. The recommendation therefore sits in line with these related occupations to provide a more consistent approach.

Occupation: 5223 Metal working production and maintenance fitters

Lead sector: Advanced Manufacturing

Immigration system context

Annual visas (three-year average): 206

Interim TSL: Yes

ISL: No

Labour market background

Employees (2025): 259,000

UK nationals % (2022 - 2024): 90%

Recommendation

Recommend access for 18 months.

The evidence on shortage is moderate. The job adverts data showed some evidence of elevated demand, and this, in conjunction with future demand projections, was enough to pass the shortage test. The actions are generally sector-specific rather than occupational-level but could still benefit the occupation. Whilst just under 50% of employees in the occupation are employed in Industrial Strategy or critical infrastructure sectors, the Jobs Plan set out how it links closely with related metalwork occupations. This occupation sits within a group of four other metalworking occupations in Advanced Manufacturing. There is some minor variation in the strength of their cases but, on balance, having different TSL access for just one of these occupations could risk driving unintended behaviours among employers. The recommendation therefore sits in line with these related occupations to provide a more consistent approach.

Occupation: 5235 Boat and ship builders and repairers

Lead sector: Advanced Manufacturing

Immigration system context

Annual visas (three-year average): 41

Interim TSL: Yes

ISL: Yes

Labour market background

Employees (2025): Not available

UK nationals % (2022 - 2024): 99%

Recommendation

Recommend access for 18 months.

The small volumes of employment in this occupation limits the quantitative data available. This makes clearly identifying shortage difficult. The actions proposed are limited but could logically benefit the occupation. There are potential issues around the suitability of the TSL for a role that is more cyclical and project-based, as well as the suggestion in the Jobs Plan that roles are sometimes advertised under alternative job titles embedded within broader fabrication, mechanical or engineering teams rather than under this occupation code (SOC 5235). Home Office data do, however, demonstrate the visa system being used in recent years and we gave the benefit of the doubt to this occupation.

1.2 Clean Energy (18 months)

The following tables cover:

• 3116 Planning, Process and Production Technicians
• 5212 Metal plate workers, smiths, moulders and related occupations
• 5249 Electrical and electronic trades n.e.c.

Occupation: 3116 Planning, process and production technicians

Lead sector: Clean Energy

Immigration system context

Annual visas (three-year average): 110

Interim TSL: Yes

ISL: No

Labour market background

Employees (2025): 62,000

UK nationals % (2022 - 2024): 82%

Recommendation

Recommend access for 18 months.

While evidence of historical shortage is limited, there is a reasonable expectation for future growth in demand linked to investment in hydrogen and carbon capture, usage and storage. The Jobs Plan cited Department for Energy Security and Net Zero stakeholder engagement highlighting planning and process roles as difficult to recruit and in high demand across several Clean Energy sub-sectors. Across Clean Energy occupations, actions are primarily sector- rather than occupation-specific, but there is reasonable confidence that actions target relevant drivers of shortage for this occupation.

Occupation: 5212 Metal plate workers, smiths, moulders and related occupations

Lead sector: Clean Energy

Immigration system context

Annual visas (three-year average): 101

Interim TSL: No

ISL: No

Labour market background

Employees (2025): 6,000

UK nationals % (2022 - 2024): 87%

Recommendation

Recommend access for 18 months.

There is some evidence of historical shortage, with trends in multiple indicators (earnings and job advert data) shifting to indicate shortage in recent years. The Jobs Plan also provides reasonable evidence of future growth linked to increased infrastructure construction in Clean Energy. Across Clean Energy occupations, actions are primarily sector- rather than occupation-specific, but there is reasonable confidence that actions target relevant drivers of shortage for this occupation. Given the nascent state of new nuclear building in the UK, stakeholder engagement made a reasonable case that TSL access would be appropriate as foreign expertise would be needed in new nuclear construction.

Occupation: 5249 Electrical and electronic trades not elsewhere classified (n.e.c)

Lead sector:

Clean Energy (Job Title: Overhead line workers)

Construction (Job Titles:

• Broadcast and communications technicians
• Signal workers
• Overhead line workers
• Power distribution and controls
• Electrical products servicing 0 Lifts and escalators)

Immigration system context

Annual visas (three-year average): 139

Interim TSL: Yes

ISL: No

Labour market background

Employees (2025): 24,000

UK nationals % (2022 - 2024): 93%

Recommendation

Recommend access for 18 months, for the job title “overhead line workers” only.

There is reasonable evidence of historical shortage at an occupation-wide level, with job advert intensity in particular strongly trending above the UK average, and reasonable evidence of future growth for ‘overhead line workers’ linked to investment in the National Grid. There were two Jobs Plans submitted for this occupation. Clean Energy focused on the job title ‘overhead line workers’ only, and Foundational Industries and critical infrastructure also covered ‘overhead line workers’ alongside other jobs titles. Only actions for ‘overhead line workers’ were convincing in targeting relevant drivers of shortage, even if actions were primarily discussed at the sector level. Allowing only specific job titles access to the TSL reduces the risk that ‘not elsewhere classified’ occupations allow ‘catch-all’ access for a wide range of jobs. Exposure to the construction sector increases exploitation risk, as highlighted by the Director of Labour Enforcement.

1.3 Digital and Technology (18 months)

The following tables cover:

• 3133 Database administrators and web content technicians
• 3544 Data analysts
• 5242 Telecoms and related network installers and repairers

Occupation: 3133 Database administrators and web content technicians

Lead sector: Digital and Technology

Immigration system context

Annual visas (three-year average): 102

Interim TSL: Yes

ISL: No

Labour market background

Employees (2025): 46,000

UK nationals % (2022 - 2024): 80%

Recommendation

Recommend access for 18 months.

There is mixed evidence of historical shortage, supported by stronger stakeholder evidence of specific recruitment difficulties. The Jobs Plan highlights rising recent demand reflecting technological change and increases in labour demand as strong drivers of shortage. The actions are sensible and partially linked to the drivers of shortage. For example, the focus on the need to expand skills supply linked to increasing demand in AI and emerging technologies. However, the plan lacked granularity of actions at the occupational level and instead relied upon sector-wide measures.

Occupation: 3544 Data analysts

Lead sector: Digital and Technology

Immigration system context

Annual visas (three-year average): 175

Interim TSL: Yes

ISL: No

Labour market background

Employees (2025): 89,000

UK nationals % (2022 - 2024): 84%

Recommendation

Recommend access for 18 months.

There was mixed quantitative evidence on current shortage, alongside stronger narrative and stakeholder evidence of emerging, skills‑based recruitment pressures in the occupation. The Jobs Plan argues the shortage in this occupation is primarily due to a lack of skills supply. The actions set out do focus on improving training pipelines and skills constraints, including through apprenticeship changes and higher education reforms. However, many of these actions are more generic, focusing on improving pipelines into the sector rather than at the occupational level.

Occupation: 5242 Telecoms and related network installers and repairers

Lead sector: Digital and Technology

Immigration system context

Annual visas (three-year average): 202

Interim TSL: Yes

ISL: No

Labour market background

Employees (2025): 29,000

UK nationals % (2022 - 2024): 89%

Recommendation

Recommend access for 18 months.

The evidence points to a moderate but credible risk of ongoing shortage, driven by structural factors including an ageing workforce, high turnover and long training lead times. While the Jobs Plan demonstrates genuine effort to expand domestic supply, for example through expanding training routes, the actions are not sufficiently targeted to address all the highlighted drivers of shortage.

1.4 Foundational Industries/Critical infrastructure (18 months)

The following tables cover:

• 3114 Building & Civil Engineering Technicians
• 3120 CAD, Drawing & Architectural Technicians
• 3512 Ship and hovercraft officers
• 5214 Pipe fitters
• 5241 Electricians and electrical fitters
• 5313 Bricklayers
• 5314 Roofers, roof tilers and slaters
• 5315 Plumbers & heating and ventilating installers and repairers
• 5316 Carpenters and joiners
• 5319 Construction and building trades n.e.c.
• 5321 Plasterers
• 5322 Floorers and wall tilers
• 5323 Painters and decorators
• 5330 Construction and building trades supervisors
• 8113 Chemical and related process operatives

Occupation: 3114 Building & civil engineering technicians

Lead sector: Foundational Industries/Critical infrastructure

Immigration system context

Annual visas (three-year average): 27

Interim TSL: Yes

ISL: No

Labour market background

Employees (2025): 13,000

UK nationals % (2022 - 2024): 90%

Recommendation

Recommend access for 18 months.

The quantitative evidence of an occupation-wide shortage is weak, but stakeholders provided evidence of some area- and sector-specific recruitment difficulties. Though the actions in the Jobs Plan are not overwhelmingly strong, they are generally aligned with the drivers of these shortages and are considered acceptable. Some exploitation risks are flagged due to the occupation’s involvement in the construction sector, but otherwise the characteristics of the occupation mean it is suitable for inclusion.

Occupation: 3120 CAD, drawing & architectural technicians

Lead sector: Foundational Industries/Critical infrastructure

Immigration system context

Annual visas (three-year average): 111

Interim TSL: Yes

ISL: No

Labour market background

Employees (2025): 51,000

UK nationals % (2022 - 2024): 89%

Recommendation

Recommend access for 18 months.

The evidence of a historical occupation-wide shortage is weak, but stakeholders provided evidence of some area- and sector-specific recruitment difficulties. Though the actions in the Jobs Plan are not overwhelmingly strong, they are generally aligned with the drivers of these particular shortages and are considered acceptable. Some exploitation risks are flagged due to the occupation’s involvement in the construction sector, but otherwise the characteristics of the occupation mean it is suitable for inclusion.

Occupation: 3512 Ship and hovercraft officers

Lead sector: Foundational Industries/Critical infrastructure

Immigration system context

Annual visas (three-year average): 255

Interim TSL: Yes

ISL: No

Labour market background

Employees (2025): 7,000

UK nationals % (2022 - 2024): 96%

Recommendation

Recommend access for 18 months.

The evidence of shortage is strong, showing a clear shortfall of domestic workers. The actions in the Jobs Plan are well-targeted and represent a relatively clear effort to address the drivers of shortage when compared to plans for other occupations. However, there are factors to consider in terms of whether TSL access is appropriate, such as the high concentration of visa usage among a small number of firms. We suggest 18-month TSL access with ongoing monitoring of the spread of visa use across employers.

Occupation: 5214 Pipe fitters

Lead sector: Foundational Industries/Critical infrastructure

Immigration system context

Annual visas (three-year average): 50

Interim TSL: Yes

ISL: No

Labour market background

Employees (2025): Not available

UK nationals % (2022 - 2024): Not available

Recommendation

Recommend access for 18 months.

The evidence of shortage is relatively strong, with the Jobs Plan providing quantitative evidence and a clear narrative explaining the drivers of shortage. Though the actions in the Jobs Plan are not overwhelmingly strong, in comparison to others, they are well-targeted at the identified drivers of shortage and are therefore deemed acceptable. The occupation also has clear links to the delivery of key critical infrastructure projects. Aside from the exploitation risks flagged for the construction sector as a whole, the occupation has a case for inclusion.

Occupation: 5241 Electricians and electrical fitters

Lead sector: Foundational Industries/Critical infrastructure

Immigration system context

Annual visas (three-year average): 103

Interim TSL: Yes

ISL: No

Labour market background

Employees (2025): 124,000

UK nationals % (2022 - 2024): 95%

Recommendation

Recommend access for 18 months.

The evidence of historical shortage is relatively strong, with a period of elevated job adverts and substantial future demand expected. The Jobs Plan clearly identifies drivers of shortage and while the actions mentioned are not overwhelmingly strong, they are acceptable. TSL access may not be fully appropriate in addressing shortages, given high levels of self-employment and the large number of small and medium enterprises which may limit uptake of visas, however, the occupation is appropriate for TSL inclusion overall.

Occupation: 5313 Bricklayers

Lead sector: Foundational Industries/Critical infrastructure

Immigration system context

Annual visas (three-year average): 240

Interim TSL: Yes

ISL: Yes

Labour market background

Employees (2025): 11,000

UK nationals % (2022 - 2024): 99%

Recommendation

Recommend access for 18 months.

The quantitative data suggest a moderate likelihood that this occupation is in shortage, driven primarily by evidence from job adverts and the latest wage data. While the Jobs Plan itself does not provide a strong case that sector-led actions will reduce shortages, subsequent clarifications from government sector experts provided greater confidence in those actions but not sufficiently to justify three-year access. In particular, further information is needed on the structural drivers of shortage and how the proposed actions will address them. We note that high self-employment in this occupation could be a factor which limits visa uptake, however, we still believe the occupation is appropriate for the TSL.

Occupation: 5314 Roofers, roof tilers and slaters

Lead sector: Foundational Industries/Critical infrastructure

Immigration system context

Annual visas (three-year average): 73

Interim TSL: Yes

ISL: Yes

Labour market background

Employees (2025): 16,000

UK nationals % (2022 - 2024): 91%

Recommendation

Recommend access for 18 months.

There is some evidence of current recruitment pressure due to strong job advert growth alongside a strong case for future shortage, driven by demand growth across housing, retrofit and solar installation. The Jobs Plan sets out a range of relevant actions with a clear emphasis on improving skills pipelines, however, these are not sufficiently targeted to address the drivers of shortage highlighted, such as pay, retention and attractiveness. High self-employment could limit the extent to which employers make use of the TSL, but this factor was not strong enough for us to state that the TSL is not appropriate.

Occupation: 5315 Plumbers & heating and ventilating installers and repairers

Lead sector: Foundational Industries/Critical infrastructure

Immigration system context

Annual visas (three-year average): 44

Interim TSL: Yes

ISL: No

Labour market background

Employees (2025): 71,000

UK nationals % (2022 - 2024): 97%

Provisional Recommendation

Recommend access for 18 months.

There is mixed evidence of a historical shortage, however, forward-looking evidence suggests the occupation could face shortages in future.

The Jobs Plan includes actions to expand the domestic workforce, particularly through training and apprenticeships. While relevant, these measures were only partially targeted at the drivers of shortage highlighted in the Jobs Plan and do not overcome highlighted barriers such as an ageing workforce or low business investment in training. This occupation was also highlighted as containing a relatively high degree of self-employment, which could reduce the ability of employers to access the TSL, however, this was not determined to rule out TSL access.

Occupation: 5316 Carpenters and joiners

Lead sector: Foundational Industries/Critical infrastructure

Immigration system context

Annual visas (three-year average): 342

Interim TSL: No

ISL: Yes

Labour market background

Employees (2025): 69,000

UK nationals % (2022 - 2024): 94%

Recommendation

Recommend access for 18 months.

Evidence of historical shortage is limited, with a mixed picture across quantitative indicators. However, the Jobs Plan suggested strong future demand. Similarly, the Jobs Plan sets out relevant actions to expand domestic supply, but these are not sufficiently targeted or quantified to provide confidence that shortages will be addressed in the short term. While a number of drivers are identified, including geographical imbalances, cyclical demand and long-term training pipelines, the proposed actions focus largely on improving skills pipelines at the sector level, rather than occupationally.

Occupation: 5319 Construction and building trades n.e.c.

Lead sector: Foundational Industries/Critical infrastructure

Immigration system context

Annual visas (three-year average): 224

Interim TSL: Yes

ISL: Yes

Labour market background

Employees (2025): 49,000

UK nationals % (2022 - 2024): 88%

Recommendation

Recommend access for 18 months, restricted to the following job titles:

• Building envelope specialists
• Curtain wall installers

The evidence of shortage is strongest for these two specialist roles linked to building safety and retrofit delivery, rather than across SOC 5319 as a whole. These two titles also have relatively strong and specific actions, such as the introduction of new training courses. We recommend access is restricted to these specific job titles to limit the risk of misusing a broad n.e.c. code. We recommend excluding the following job titles:

• Retrofitters – We do not recommend retaining ‘retrofitters’ as a job title. Stakeholder engagement indicates retrofit is best understood as an activity delivered across established trades, rather than a distinct job with a standalone labour force and training pipeline. This removal would reduce ambiguity within the n.e.c. code and risks of misclassification.

• Builders; fence erectors; green roofers – We do not recommend these job titles at this stage. Evidence of shortage and actions is limited. In addition, “builder” is a broad descriptor and historic visa use has been concentrated in these titles, which increases the risk that inclusion could broaden access beyond the job titles that have a case for TSL access.

• Cladders/cladding roles – We do not recommend these job titles at this stage. These roles overlap with SOC 5314 ‘Roofers, roof tilers and slaters’ and the differences are not sufficiently clear to support inclusion under the n.e.c. code.

• Insulation installer technician – We do not recommend this title at this stage. CASCOT – software that helps map text to standard classifications - maps this job title to SOC 8159 ‘Construction operatives n.e.c.’, an RQF 1-2 occupation which would fall outside TSL scope.

Occupation: 5321 Plasterers

Lead sector: Foundational Industries/Critical infrastructure

Immigration system context

Annual visas (three-year average): 118

Interim TSL: No

ISL: No

Labour market background

Employees (2025): 9,000

UK nationals % (2022 - 2024): 90%

Recommendation

Recommend access for 18 months.

The historical shortage data is mixed: data on job adverts, earnings and working hours are inconsistent in direction or below the UK average, and planned domestic actions are relatively weak and largely unquantified. However, this occupation is highly embedded in the Industrial Strategy and critical infrastructure sectors (around 90% of employees in this occupation work in these sectors based on APS 2022–2024 data and around 60% based on ASHE 2024 data), which strengthens the case that any shortage could disproportionately impact delivery of the Industrial Strategy. Exploitation risks and a high non‑grant rate of visas need to be monitored.

Occupation: 5322 Floorers and wall tilers

Lead sector: Foundational Industries/Critical infrastructure

Immigration system context

Annual visas (three-year average): 57

Interim TSL: Yes

ISL: No

Labour market background

Employees (2025): 10,000

UK nationals % (2022 - 2024): 90%

Recommendation

Recommend access for 18 months.

The historical shortage data is mixed but Jobs Plan evidence pointed to a sizeable and persistent gap between supply and demand, with strong demand pressures linked to housing and retrofit activity. Though the actions are relevant to the occupation (e.g. National Vocational Qualification Level 3 reform and training expansion), they are modest in scale and not well quantified. High self-employment and subcontracting rates suggest the TSL may not be suitable but weighed against the occupation’s strong links to the Industrial Strategy and critical infrastructure, we suggest 18-month TSL access.

Occupation: 5323 Painters and decorators

Lead sector: Foundational Industries/Critical infrastructure

Immigration system context

Annual visas (three-year average): 44

Interim TSL: Yes

ISL: No

Labour market background

Employees (2025): 27,000

UK nationals % (2022 - 2024): 82%

Recommendation

Recommend access for 18 months.

The historical shortage data is mixed, but there are plausible future demand pressures and stakeholder evidence of recruitment difficulty linked to rising competency requirements. Though the Jobs Plan actions were relevant, they were not overwhelmingly strong: they appeared to be of modest scale but are largely unquantified and did not provide much confidence that domestic supply will increase materially in the near term.

We note very high self-employment may limit the uptake of visas but suggest 18‑month TSL access given the occupation’s role in delivering Industrial Strategy and critical infrastructure priorities.

Occupation: 5330 Construction and building trades supervisors

Lead sector: Foundational Industries/Critical infrastructure

Immigration system context

Annual visas (three-year average): 76

Interim TSL: Yes

ISL: No

Labour market background

Employees (2025): 47,000

UK nationals % (2022 - 2024): 96%

Recommendation

Recommend access for 18 months.

While quantitative evidence of shortage is limited, there is consistent qualitative evidence from stakeholders pointing to bottlenecks in availability of supervisors affecting critical activity, alongside rising future demand and long-term training requirements.

The domestic workforce actions are primarily at the sector level but lack sufficient detail on how they will improve supply of workers within that occupation and to what scale.

Occupation: 8113 Chemical and related process operatives

Lead sector: Foundational Industries/Critical infrastructure

Immigration system context

Annual visas (three-year average): 9 (Data available for 24/25 only)

Interim TSL: No

ISL: No

Labour market background

Employees (2025): 20,000

UK nationals % (2022 - 2024): 89%

Recommendation

Recommend access for 18 months.

There is a moderate case for shortage, with stronger evidence emerging when considering future demand and area-specific pressures. While the Jobs Plan set out credible actions to improve domestic supply, these were not fully quantified and the scale of the impacts of actions on supply are unclear. At the same time, risks of abuse or exploitation appear low and well-managed, and there are no clear barriers to use of the sponsorship system.

2. Occupations not recommended for TSL access

2.1 Occupations failing the shortage test

Occupation: 3111 Laboratory technicians

Lead sector: Life Sciences

Immigration system context

Annual visas (three-year average): 79

Interim TSL: Yes

ISL: Recommended for those with three years + experience only

Labour market background

Employees (2025): 77,000

UK nationals % (2022 - 2024): 79%

Recommendation

Recommend no access.

Evidence of both historical and future shortage is limited in both internal data and Jobs Plan evidence. The projected size of future shortages quoted in the Jobs Plan could be met almost entirely by current levels of newly qualified trainees each year. None of the stakeholders we engaged or evidence we received presented any persuasive or verifiable evidence that a shortage exists and retention was highlighted by stakeholders as a primary issue rather than availability of suitable labour.

Occupation: 3115 Quality assurance technicians

Lead sector: Life Sciences

Immigration system context

Annual visas (three-year average): 106

Interim TSL: Yes

ISL: No

Labour market background

Employees (2025): 48,000

UK nationals % (2022 - 2024): 82%

Recommendation

Recommend no access.

Evidence for the presence of both historical and future shortage is limited, both in internal data and Jobs Plan evidence. The Jobs Plan evidence at times discussed shortage at sector level or discussed technician occupations as a group, rather than focussing on this occupation. The Jobs Plan also noted churn and movement between employers in the occupation as a sign of shortage without explaining why employers in Industrial Strategy sectors – identified on the basis of high growth potential – could not compete to attract labour. Further stakeholder engagement did not provide evidence of shortage and stakeholders did not consider this occupation important to the sector.

Occupation: 3549 Business associate professionals n.e.c.

Lead sector: Professional Business Services

Immigration system context

Annual visas (three-year average): 204

Interim TSL: Yes

ISL: No

Labour market background

Employees (2025): 118,000

UK nationals % (2022 - 2024): 85%

Recommendation

Recommend no access.

There is very limited evidence of historical shortage. Expected future growth is in line with the annual variation in the size of the occupation and it seems unlikely that supply will fail to grow to meet any increase in demand. The Jobs Plan did not present any specific or persuasive evidence of shortage in any specific job titles, regions, nations or employers.

Even if there was a strong set of actions in the Jobs Plan, the occupation might have been deemed inappropriate for TSL access due to the relatively transferrable skills required for this occupation which are likely to exist within the domestic workforce already.

Occupation: 3554 Marketing associate professionals

Lead sector: Creative Industries

Immigration system context

Annual visas (three-year average): 1,005

Interim TSL: Yes

ISL: No

Labour market background

Employees (2025): 180,000

UK nationals % (2022 - 2024): 88%

Recommendation

Recommend no access.

Historical evidence pointed resolutely away from the existence of shortage. For example, job adverts per 100 employee jobs have fallen steadily, and ultimately by over 50%, since 2022.

Jobs Plan evidence was unconvincing and at times undermined the case for shortage, suggesting that vacancies were easier to fill in this occupation than in the wider economy, that occupational employment growth in the creative sector was minimal and that workers were broadly appropriately skilled.

Even if there was a strong set of actions in the Jobs Plan, the occupation might have been deemed inappropriate for TSL access due to the relatively transferrable skills required for this occupation which are likely to exist within the domestic workforce already.

Occupation: 3556 Sales accounts and business development managers

Lead sector: Professional Business Services

Immigration system context

Annual visas (three-year average): 1,192

Interim TSL: N/A (treated as RQF6)

ISL: No

Labour market background

Employees (2025): 486,000

UK nationals % (2022 - 2024): 89%

Recommendation

Recommend no access.

There is very limited evidence of historical shortage. Expected future growth in demand is very small relative to the size of the occupation and it seems unlikely that growth cannot be accommodated.

Even if there was a strong set of actions in the Jobs Plan, the occupation might have been deemed inappropriate for TSL access due to the relatively transferrable skills required for this occupation which are likely to exist within the domestic workforce already.

Occupation: 5234 Aircraft maintenance and related trades

Lead sector: Advanced Manufacturing

Immigration system context

Annual visas (three-year average): 25

Interim TSL: No

ISL: No

Labour market background

Employees (2025): 14,000

UK nationals % (2022 - 2024): 92%

Recommendation

Recommend no access.

There is very limited evidence of shortage for this occupation. The three key shortage metrics were all showing as below the UK average trend for all periods covered, with this especially apparent for earnings and job adverts data. Further review of the Jobs Plan and stakeholder evidence did not provide persuasive evidence of shortage. Of the nine occupations with Advanced Manufacturing Jobs Plans, ASHE data shows this occupation has the lowest proportion of workers aged 50 or over (25%) and the joint lowest median age (36), suggesting this occupation is not as impacted by an ageing workforce when compared to other occupations.

Occupation: 5250 Skilled metal, electrical and electronic trades supervisors

Lead sector: Foundational Industries/Critical infrastructure

Immigration system context

Annual visas (three-year average): 19

Interim TSL: No

ISL: No

Labour market background

Employees (2025): 70,000

UK nationals % (2022 - 2024): 92%

Recommendation

Recommend no access.

Evidence of historical shortage is very limited and estimates of future shortage were not convincing. The projections from the Jobs Plan argued for a shortage that was a tiny fraction of those currently working in the occupation, suggesting that future demand could be satisfied within the current workforce. No other persuasive arguments on shortage were provided in the Jobs Plan.

2.2 Occupations failing the actions test

Occupation: 1243 Managers in logistics

Lead sector: Foundational Industries/Critical infrastructure

Immigration system context

Annual visas (three-year average): 71

Interim TSL: Yes

ISL: No

Labour market background

Employees (2025): 33,000

UK nationals % (2022 - 2024): 91%

Recommendation

Recommend no access.

The evidence of shortage is weak, with relatively small increases in demand predicted given the future size of the occupation. While the Jobs Plan did identify some issues facing the sector, it is unclear the extent to which the actions mentioned can be expected to impact supply and are therefore deemed to be inadequate. Given the weak evidence of shortage and inadequate actions this occupation does not pass the tests required for TSL access.

Occupation: 3533 Financial and accounting technicians

Lead sector: Professional Business Services

Immigration system context

Annual visas (three-year average): 141

Interim TSL: Yes

ISL: No

Labour market background

Employees (2025): 41,000

UK nationals % (2022 - 2024): 82%

Recommendation

Recommend no access.

The evidence of shortage is sufficiently weak that the occupation could potentially be failed on the first test alone as projected changes in demand are small compared to historical fluctuations in employment. The Jobs Plan did not make a convincing case that the planned actions are likely to significantly impact the supply of workers. Therefore, this occupation is borderline in passing the shortage test and does not pass the actions test required for TSL access.

Occupation: 3541 Estimators, valuers and assessors

Lead sector: Foundational Industries/Critical infrastructure

Immigration system context

Annual visas (three-year average): 34

Interim TSL: Yes

ISL: No

Labour market background

Employees (2025): 63,000

UK nationals % (2022 - 2024): 94%

Recommendation

Recommend no access.

There is some evidence of historical shortage in this occupation, with online job adverts above UK trend since 2023, however the Jobs Plans did not explain why supply will be unable to respond to future increases in demand. While sector-level initiatives may have some impact on the occupation, the Jobs Plan evidence did not explain how the occupation would benefit or clearly link these initiatives to drivers of shortage in this occupation. As such there is weak confidence in the targeting and significant uncertainty over the impact of actions. The evidence provided for this occupation was very similar to that provided for 3581 Inspectors of standards and regulations.

Occupation: 3552 Business sales executives

Lead sector: Professional Business Services

Immigration system context

Annual visas (three-year average): 659

Interim TSL: Yes

ISL: No

Labour market background

Employees (2025): 208,000

UK nationals % (2022 - 2024): 89%

Recommendation

Recommend no access.

While expected future growth in the occupation is in line with historical year-to-year variation, online job advert data did show some evidence of historical shortage, and the occupation passed the shortage test. However, the Jobs Plan did not outline drivers of shortage effectively or link these to actions being taken to address any shortage.

Even if there was a strong set of actions in the Jobs Plan, the occupation might have been deemed inappropriate for TSL access due to the relatively transferrable skills required for this occupation which are likely to exist within the domestic workforce already.

Occupation: 3581 Inspectors of standards and regulations

Lead sector: Foundational Industries/Critical infrastructure

Immigration system context

Annual visas (three-year average): 49

Interim TSL: No

ISL: No

Labour market background

Employees (2025): 24,000

UK nationals % (2022 - 2024): 95%

Recommendation

Recommend no access.

There is some evidence of historical shortage in this occupation, with online job adverts above UK trend since 2023. However, the Jobs Plan did not explain why supply will be unable to respond to future increases in demand. While sector-level initiatives may have some impact on the occupation, there are no occupation-specific actions, and the Jobs Plan evidence did not explain how the occupation would benefit or clearly link these initiatives to drivers of shortage in this occupation. As such we have very low confidence in the targeting and impact of actions. The evidence provided for this occupation was very similar to that provided for 3541 ‘Estimators, valuers and assessors’.

Occupation: 5225 Air-conditioning and refrigeration installers and repairers

Lead sector: Foundational Industries/Critical infrastructure

Immigration system context

Annual visas (three-year average): 16

Interim TSL: Yes

ISL: No

Labour market background

Employees (2025): 7,000

UK nationals % (2022 - 2024): 89%

Recommendation

Recommend no access.

There are no signs of historical shortage in the data but forecasted future demand is substantial relative to the current size of the occupation. While sector-level initiatives may have some impact on the occupation, the occupation-specific actions are vague and not clearly targeted at the drivers of shortage described. As such, we have very low confidence in the impact of actions. The high number of small and medium enterprises and self-employment in the occupation also suggests migration may not be an effective means of addressing future demand increases if they do come to fruition.

Occupation: 5245 Security system installers and repairers

Lead sector: Foundational Industries/Critical infrastructure

Immigration system context

Annual visas (three-year average): 24

Interim TSL: Yes

ISL: No

Labour market background

Employees (2025): 11,000

UK nationals % (2022 - 2024): 96%

Recommendation

Recommend no access.

There is some evidence of shortage, with online job adverts above UK trend since 2021 whilst the Jobs Plan suggested pockets of shortage in certain job roles. While the Jobs Plan did identify multiple drivers of shortage, such as barriers to the skills system and limitations in apprenticeship provision, these tend to be focussed on specific subsets of the occupation such as electrical or fire and safety roles. The actions reported in the Jobs Plan overwhelmingly covered the telecoms segment of this occupation for which no drivers of shortage were identified. Different parts of the plan discussed different roles, and as the drivers of shortage and actions in this occupation do not line up we recommend the occupation does not receive access to the TSL.

2.3 Occupations failing the appropriateness test

Occupation: 3429 Design occupations n.e.c.

Lead sector: Creative industries

Immigration system context

Annual visas (three-year average): 40

Interim TSL: Yes

ISL: No

Labour market background

Employees (2025): 27,000

UK nationals % (2022 - 2024): 79%

Recommendation

Recommend no access.

This occupation narrowly passed on the first two tests relating to shortage and quality of the Jobs Plan. However, as a broad occupation code with many disparate roles included in it, there was no way to be confident that shortage existed across the entirety of the occupation, and Jobs Plan actions were not well targeted across the diverse range of positions. Including the entire n.e.c. code on the TSL would mean roles without clear justification (i.e. no clear relevance to the Industrial Strategy, evidence of shortage nor any specific actions targeted at them) could access the immigration system. The inherent risk associated with n.e.c. occupations (that without specifying individual job titles other occupations might use the code for their own roles), and potential exploitation risks in the creative industries, meant access was not deemed appropriate. We encouraged submissions to our Call for Evidence to justify specific roles within n.e.c. occupations for these reasons, and doing so in the Jobs Plan would have made a stronger case.

Occupation: 5231 Vehicle technicians, mechanics and electricians

Lead sector: Advanced Manufacturing

Immigration system context

Annual visas (three-year average): 450

Interim TSL: Yes

ISL: No

Labour market background

Employees (2025): 125,000

UK nationals % (2022 - 2024): 95%

Recommendation

Recommend no access.

Whilst this occupation did show some elements of shortage, and we have some confidence in the Jobs Plan proposed actions, we do not recommend TSL access. This occupation failed our final test of appropriateness for TSL access, primarily as it sits too far outside of the core purpose of the TSL in supporting the Industrial Strategy. Of the occupations we received a Jobs Plans for, APS data showed this occupation had the lowest proportion of workers employed within the Industrial Strategy sectors (17%). Similarly, within the visa data, usage was generally outside of the priority sectors and primarily within the retail sector (e.g. smaller garage repairs) rather than in Advanced Manufacturing. Between July 2024 to June 2025, nine of the ten sponsors with the largest volumes of visa applications for this occupation were in vehicle retail, vehicle maintenance or servicing, or were bus operators.

Whilst we appreciate that the move to electric vehicles (EVs) will present challenges for the occupation, this represents a shift in the skills required for the role rather than a step change in the level of demand (i.e. those who repair petrol or diesel vehicles could retrain to work on EVs). With apprenticeship routes now generally including the basics of EV maintenance, and providers offering retraining courses for existing technicians (for example, available Level 3 EV top-up courses last two days), it will require market activity to gradually train new workers and upskill existing workers in these new technologies over the coming years rather than a significant increase in new supply.

3. Occupations given separate consideration

Occupation: 3414 Dancers and choreographers and 3415 Musicians

Lead sector: Creative industries

Immigration system context

2024/25 visas (three-year average): Both fewer than 10 per year

Interim TSL:

• Dancers: Yes

• Musicians: N/A (treated as RQF6)

ISL:

• Dancers: Yes
• Musicians: Yes

Labour market background

Employees (2025): Both N/A

UK nationals % (2022 - 2024): Both N/A

Recommendation

Recommend no access but that certain job titles in each occupation be added to the Skilled Worker route.

3414 Dancers and Choreographers - only skilled classical “ballet dancers” or skilled “contemporary dancers” who meet the standard required by internationally recognised UK ballet or contemporary dance companies

3415 Musicians – only skilled orchestral musicians who meet the standard required by internationally recognised UK orchestras

See Section 3.4 (page 28) for full discussion.

Annex 4: Additional data tables

Annex 4 is published as an Excel document alongside this report. It updates Annex A published alongside our Temporary Shortage List (TSL) Stage 1 report to include the recommendation for each occupation as set out in this report, includes updated Skills England assessments of priority occupations, and redesigns the layout for ease of reading for certain columns.

1. Data is available from 2001 onwards and prior to the coronavirus pandemic the highest value seen was 0.6 vacancies per unemployed person. ↩

2. ONS ‘UNEM01 SA: Unemployment by age and duration (seasonally adjusted)’. This data illustrates of the estimated 514,000 increase in unemployment between January to March 2022 and January to March 2026, around 277,000 (53%) was attributable to people aged under 25. ↩

3. Please see ONS ‘VACS01: Vacancies and unemployment’. Vacancy data includes all sectors aside from Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing. This ONS data is derived from the Labour Force Survey and Vacancy Survey. Please refer to Annex 1 for discussion of limitations of the Labour Force Survey. ↩

4. OBR ‘Economic and Fiscal Outlook March 2024’. This publication noted a “loosening in labour market conditions” in 2024. ↩

5. OBR ‘Economic and Fiscal Outlook March 2026’. This latest OBR report noted “labour market conditions continue to loosen as the unemployment rate has risen, redundancy rates have increased, and private sector pay growth has eased” ↩

6. Bank of England (2026) ‘Monetary Policy Report – April 2026’. This latest Bank of England Monetary Policy Report notes “labour market conditions are considerably looser than at the onset of the previous energy shock in 2022” ↩

7. ONS ‘EMP16: Underemployment and overemployment’. This source estimates the underemployment rate was 8.6% in Jan-Mar 2026 compared to 7.5% in Jan-Mar 2023. ↩

8. ONS ‘X02: Labour Force Survey flows estimates’. This source estimates Job-to-Job flow rates were 2.0% in Jan-Mar 2026 compared to 3.2% in Jan-Mar 2023. ↩

9. See, for example: The Economist, 14 May 2026, Prepare for an AI jobs apocalypse. ↩

10. (PDF) GPTs are GPTs: An Early Look at the Labor Market Impact Potential of Large Language Models ↩

11. (PDF) How Exposed Are UK Jobs to Generative AI? Developing and Applying a Novel Task-Based Index ↩

12. International Labour Organisation: Generative AI and Jobs ↩

13. AI and the UK labour market: the evidence so far ↩

14. International Monetary Fund: World Economic Outlook, April 2026: Global Economy in the Shadow of War ↩

15. Based on Skills England’s Accompanying tables for Skills Needs Assessments, sheet AIOE_by_education_level, which reports SOC 2020-level all-AI and LLM exposure scores using the Felten et al. methodology ratings. ↩

16. Business insights and impact on the UK economy - Office for National Statistics ↩

17. International Monetary Fund: World Economic Outlook, April 2026: Global Economy in the Shadow of War ↩

18. This means the different approaches can lead to differences in use of indicators on similar issues. For example, both our work and Skills England Occupation in Demand analysis look at indicators in hours worked and hourly earnings, and their focus leads to looking at change over a year compared to a historical baseline whereas our focus leads to looking at indexed trend over a longer period compared to UK-wide trends. ↩

19. The 2026 list was published on 1 June 2026: Skills England Annual Skills Report and Sectoral Skills Needs Assessments 2026 - GOV.UK. ↩

20. This replicates the wording used to assign part of the occupation ISL access, excluding the part stipulating visa holder must be ‘leaders, principals, sub-principals or numbered string positions’ which we understand has the unintended consequence of excluding players of certain instruments. ↩

21. For example, see Director of Labour Market Enforcement (2025) ‘Labour Market Enforcement Strategy 2025 to 2026’. ↩

22. See Skilled Worker visa: How much it costs - GOV.UK. Visa fees for applicants who are not benefitting from ISL discounts are £819 per person (up to three years) or £1,618 per person (more than three years) if applying out-of-country, or £943 per person (up to three years) or £1,865 per person (more than three years) if applying in-country. Regardless of whether the application is in or out-of-country, fees for applicants benefitting from ISL discounts are £628 per person (up to three years) or £1,235 per person (more than three years). ↩

23. As a RQF 6+ occupation, 2111 ’Chemical scientists’ is unaffected by recommendations in this review, however the end of the ISL in December 2026 will see Scotland-only salary threshold discounts that apply for work in the nuclear industry end. 5235 ‘Boat and ship builders and repairers‘ is currently on the ISL as Scotland-only and on the Interim TSL for UK-wide access, meaning applicants in Scotland benefit from a salary threshold discount others in the rest of UK do not. The occupation-specific threshold for this occupation is currently £33,700, higher than the £33,400 that applies as a general threshold for applicants under the ISL and lower than the £41,700 general threshold that applies under the interim TSL. The MAC’s ‘Review of Salary Requirements’ recommended a general threshold of £30,900 to apply on the TSL, which would mean the occupation-specific threshold would become the effective threshold UK-wide were the recommendation accepted, similar to the current threshold under the ISL that applies in Scotland only. ↩

24. Our Stage 1 report proposed HO introduce a formal process for departments publicly write to the MAC in exceptional cases where circumstances have significantly changed and they would like an occupation to be reviewed outside of the three-year TSL cycle. ↩

25. For example see the ‘Filters and Weights’ section of the 2022 version of this information document: ASHE Dataset Notes: 2022. This standard filter focuses on cases with a valid work region, aged 16+, in the relevant year, being paid on the adult rate of pay and not seeing a loss of pay in the week surveyed. ↩

26. For example, see volumes presented in Tables 14.5a or 14.9a of Earnings and hours worked, occupation by four-digit SOC: ASHE Table 14 - Office for National Statistics ↩

27. This amended filter filters for cases with a valid work region, aged 16+, in the relevant year ↩

28. Due to the increase in skills threshold and not being included in either the Immigration Salary List or Interim TSL. See HC 997 - Explanatory Memorandum for more information on July 2025 Immigration Rules changes. ↩

29. Defined as employees starting with their current employer within the 12 months prior to the April survey reference period in ASHE data. ↩

30. The ability to robustly compare against new hires in ASHE data was limited, but it is noted comparing visa use against new hires would be the preferred comparison. ↩