Accredited official statistics

Why do people come to the UK - Work?

Published 22 May 2025

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This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/immigration-system-statistics-year-ending-march-2025/why-do-people-come-to-the-uk-work

Back to ‘Immigration system statistics, year ending March 2025’ content page.

Data relates to the year ending March 2025 and all comparisons are with the year ending March 2024 (unless indicated otherwise).

Work-related visa grants have decreased over the last 2 years, largely due to the decline in main applicants and dependants issued Health and Care visas.

There were 192,110 visas granted to main applicants in all work categories in the year ending March 2025, 39% fewer than the previous year, but 40% higher than in 2019, prior to the onset of the Covid pandemic.

Between 2009 and 2020 there were less than 140,000 work visas issued to main applicants each year. Since the beginning of 2021, there has been an increase in the number of work visas granted, with ‘Health and Care Worker’ visa numbers in particular growing sharply following the expansion of the route in February 2022 to boost the social care workforce. The growth in this route was accompanied by a large increase in the number of work-related dependant visas, with the majority of all work dependants (60%) over the latest 3 years being on the ‘Health and Care Worker’ visa.

In December 2023, the Home Office announced policy changes for work visas, which came into effect at various points in 2024. The fall towards the end of 2023 is likely due to more scrutiny applied by the Home Office to employers in the health and social care sector, and compliance activity taken against employers of migrant workers, as well as the recent policy measures affecting care workers introduced in Spring 2024. The number of ‘Health and Care Worker’ visas issued to main applicants has fallen by 81% in the year ending March 2025. Dependant visas have also fallen by 78% over the same period. Home Office has published monthly updates on the key visa types since March 2024 - see ‘Monthly statistical releases on migration - GOV.UK’ for further information on these changes.

Other skilled work routes and ‘Temporary Worker’ visas also increased from 2021, but their numbers have levelled off in the last 2 years.

Figure 1: Work visas granted to main applicants between the year ending March 2015 and the year ending March 2025

Source: Entry clearance visa applications and outcomes – Vis_D02

Notes:

  1. The ‘Worker’ visa line divides after 2021 (denoted by the dashed lines), when the ‘Health and Care Worker’ visa was introduced alongside other skilled work. Prior to this, the ‘Worker’ category is comprised of visas under the previous ‘Tier 2’ points-based system.

1.1 Health and Care Workers, other skilled work routes, and their family members

The number of ‘Health and Care Worker’ visa grants have decreased over the last year, with the largest fall coming from the Caring Personal Service occupations.

The number of ‘Health and Care Worker’ visas to main applicants increased from 37,416 in the year ending March 2022 to 145,823 in the year ending December 2023. The rise was primarily due to an increase in South Asian (Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi) and Sub-Saharan African (Zimbabwean, Ghanaian, and Nigerian) nationals coming to work as care workers. There were 22,582 ‘Health and Care Worker’ visas granted to main applicants in the year ending March 2025. The number of ‘Health and Care Worker’ visas issued to migrant workers in a Caring Personal Service occupation fell by 91% to 7,893 in the year ending March 2025.

The number of grants to main applicants on other routes in the ‘Worker’ category (which includes ‘Skilled Worker’ visas) has decreased by 23% in the year ending March 2025. The majority of the fall is accounted for by fewer grants for Food Preparation and Hospitality Trades, down 4,936 (-49%) to 5,079 over this period. Food Preparation and Hospitality Trades had increased between 2021 and the first half of 2024 but have seen large falls in the last three-quarters. Following the UK’s exit from the European Union and the COVID-19 pandemic there was a large increase in recruitment in the tech sector (mainly IT professionals), with falls since the latter part of 2022 reflecting market saturation and falls in demand. Visas issued for IT Professionals have continued to fall and were down 2,915 (-21%) to 10,969 in the year ending March 2025.

Figure 2: Visas granted to dependants of work visa holders by visa route, between the year ending March 2020 and the year ending March 2025

Source: Entry clearance visa applications and outcomes – Vis_D02

Notes:

  1. The ‘Skilled Worker’ and ‘Health and Care Worker’ visas were introduced in 2020 and together replaced the ‘Tier 2 – General’ visa.

Figure 2 shows that the introduction of the ‘Health and Care Worker’ and ‘Skilled Worker’ routes contributed to a large overall increase in visas issued to work dependants, from 55,507 in 2019 to 288,964 in the year ending March 2024 but have since fallen to 112,546 in the year ending March 2025. ‘Health and Care Worker’ dependants alone accounted for 41% of all work dependants in the latest year (albeit this is lower than the 72% in the preceding peak year ending March 2024).

In the year ending March 2025, there was an average of 2 dependants per main applicant on the ‘Health and Care Worker’ route. By contrast, those on ‘Skilled Worker’ visas brought an average of one dependant per main applicant during this period.

1.2 Temporary workers

‘Temporary Worker’ visas granted to main applicants have remained broadly consistent over the last 3 years, with ‘Seasonal Worker’ the most common route.

In the year ending March 2025, 46% of ‘Temporary Worker’ visas granted to main applicants were for seasonal work, 29% were under the ‘Youth Mobility Scheme’ and the remaining 24% were for other temporary work.

There were 74,875 ‘Temporary Worker’ visas granted to main applicants in the year ending March 2025. This is 6% fewer than the previous year but 83% higher than in 2019, largely due to the higher numbers on the ‘Seasonal Worker’ route.

Figure 3: ‘Temporary Worker’ visas granted to main applicants, between the year ending March 2020 and the year ending March 2025

Source: Entry clearance visa applications and outcomes – Vis_D02

Figure 3 shows grants of ‘Seasonal Worker’ visas in the year ending March 2025 decreased by 5% to 34,700 compared with the previous year. The ‘Seasonal Worker’ route was launched in March 2019 with the number of visas that could be granted limited to 2,500 that year. The annual quota has since increased to 47,000 for 2024 (and will be 45,000 for 2025), which partly explains the overall growth in ‘Temporary Worker’ visas issued over the last few years.

The nationalities of applicants for ‘Seasonal Worker’ visas have remained the same in the latest year. Central Asian nationalities (such as Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan) together represent over three-quarters (77%) of grants in the latest year. Ukrainian nationals were the largest recipients of Seasonal Worker visas prior to the start of the war in Ukraine and the launch of the Ukraine visa schemes in 2022 but there were only 676 seasonal work visas granted to Ukrainians in the year ending March 2025.

The number of ‘Youth Mobility Scheme’ visas issued in the year ending March 2025 was 11% lower at 21,933. The growth in Youth Mobility scheme numbers since the year ending September 2021 reflects a bounce-back for the scheme which was heavily impacted by travel restrictions during the pandemic. Recent numbers also include the addition of the India Young Professionals Scheme, which held its first ballot in February 2023. This new scheme had a quota limited to 3,000 places, and in the year ending March 2025 there were 2,235 grants to Indian nationals under this scheme.

Extensions into work routes continue to increase since 2019, driven by the ‘Graduate’, ‘Health and Care Worker’, and the ‘Skilled Worker’ routes.

Grants of an extension into work routes for main applicants increased by nearly a quarter, in the year ending March 2025, nearly 7 times the amount in 2019, primarily driven by the ‘Graduate’, ‘Health and Care Worker’, and the ‘Skilled Worker’ routes.

The number of ‘Graduate’ route extensions granted to main applicants increased by 31% to 181,905 in the latest year. Increases were also seen in the ‘Health and Care Worker’ (+17%) and ‘Skilled Worker’ (+19%) routes with 122,498 and 103,700 grants of extensions respectively in the year ending March 2025.

Analysis from the Migrant journey: 2024 report shows that of those arriving on work routes in 2019, 45% still held valid or indefinite leave 5 years later. This suggests most workers do not remain in the UK indefinitely, although this percentage has increased, from 23% for those arriving on work routes in 2012.

The proportion who remain and are granted indefinite leave varies by route, and is considerably higher in the ‘Investor, business development and talent’ visa category where 75% of main applicants, that arrived in 2019, held valid leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain after 5 years. Temporary workers by the nature of their visa are less likely to stay long term, needing to obtain a new type of visa to do so, and only 17% who arrived in 2019 on a ‘Temporary Worker’ visa still held leave 5 years later.

The Home Office publishes the number of ‘Skilled Worker’ and ‘Health and Care Worker’ visa applications by month in the Monthly monitoring of entry clearance visa applications publication.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) publish long-term international migration estimates. These are statistics under development that estimate the number of people immigrating to and emigrating from the UK for 12 months or more.

3.1 Sponsorship licensing for work and study

At the end of year ending March 2025, there were 116,196 organisations and institutions registered as licensed sponsors for work and study, compared to 31,899 in 2019 before the introduction of the new Immigration system following the UK’s departure from the EU.

This data also shows that there were 37,263 sponsor licences decided in the year ending March 2025, compared to 48,022 in the year ending March 2024. Of these, 22,631 licences were granted (39% fewer than the year before), and 14,632 were not granted (including both applications withdrawn and those rejected).

4. About these statistics

The statistics in this section provide an indication of the number of people who have an intention to enter the UK for work reasons. Further information and definitions can be found in the user guide.

Entry clearance visas allow an individual to enter and stay in the UK within the period for which the visa is valid. Data in this section refers to the number of Entry clearance visas granted for work reasons within the period. If an individual was granted a visa more than once in a given period, this has been counted as multiple grants in the statistics.

Year-on-year comparisons of the number of decisions can be affected by quarterly fluctuations in the data. These fluctuations can be examined in the quarterly data in the published tables. Year ending comparisons will also include impacts resulting from the travel restrictions put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Extensions of temporary stay in the UK relate to individuals inside the UK extending or changing the status of their right to stay in the UK. An individual is required to apply for an extension or change in status before their existing permission to enter or stay in the UK expires.

The statistics in this chapter show the number of grants and refusals on applications for extension of temporary stay in the UK. One individual may have made multiple applications for an extension, so may account for multiple decisions. Data in this section includes dependants and takes account of the outcomes of reconsiderations and appeals.

Before 2023, extensions under the ‘Skilled Worker’ and ‘Skilled Worker Health and Care Worker’ visas were not separated into specific subcategories; instead, they were reported as a single, combined figure. Since 2023, however, these extensions have been classified under distinct categories: either ‘Skilled Worker’ or ‘Skilled Worker Health and Care Worker’.

Publication of the ‘Sponsored work visas by occupation and industry’ dataset was temporarily paused due to the Home Office adopting the latest Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) framework; a common classification of jobs in the UK overseen by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). We have resumed publication of this dataset, with the latest available data currently up to the end of December 2024. The new dataset uses the SOC 2020 framework and in order to provide a comparable time series, 2021 to Q3 (July to September) 2024 is primarily based on modelled estimates by converting occupations under the 2010 framework to occupations under the 2020 framework.

5. Data tables

Data on immigration for work can be found in the following tables:

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