Drop in Skilled Worker visas should not signal pivot to reliance on high-risk short-term work visas
In a fevered bid to reduce migration, the immigration White Paper published earlier this month proposed major changes to the UK work migration system.
The overseas recruitment of care workers under the Health and Care Worker visa will end. To qualify for the Skilled Worker visa, the government wants to increase the minimum salary threshold and require migrants to be educated to degree level or above (RQF 6+). New time-limited visas will be added to support migration into lower-skilled but strategically important occupations - the details of which remain to be determined.
If reducing work migration was the government’s central aim, the latest immigration statistics suggest they are on track to achieve it. In fact, they would have been even without the divisive narrative surrounding the White Paper. The recruitment of overseas care workers has been reduced to a slither for the fifth consecutive quarter. Following an increase in salary thresholds in April 2024, the number of Skilled Worker visas has also been in steady decline.
But while Home Office data makes it clear that employers cannot afford to recruit overseas workers at the salary rates set by the government, labour market data indicates that workforce shortages remain acute, including in many occupations below degree level.
In this blog post we reflect on what the data spells out for the government’s work migration strategy, and why turning to time-limited visas carries risks. We argue that the White Paper won’t end overseas recruitment. It will just make it more complex for employers, and more precarious for workers. If the government is serious about protecting the vulnerable, consultation needs to start today, and include migrant worker voices in the process.
Care worker visas reduced to a slither
The number of Health and Care Worker (HCW) visas issued to care professionals has plummeted from a peak of 34,500 in Q3 2023 to just 1,800 in Q1 2025 (see Fig. 1). The drop-off in numbers is particularly apparent since Q2 2024, when the government changed immigration policy, banning care workers from bringing dependants and raising salary thresholds.
Figure 1. Number of Health and Care visas issued to care professionals, 2023-2025
How immigration policy changes affected the recruitment of care workers
Firstly, from 11 March 2024 the government banned new international care workers from acquiring visas for their partners and minor children. This made the UK a less attractive destination for international recruits in the care sector. According to the Home Office’s recent evaluation of the Skilled Worker route, only 10% of Skilled Workers with dependants would have applied for the visa, if their dependants hadn’t been able to join them. Meanwhile, nearly two-thirds (65%) of HCW sponsors have found recruitment of new workers harder, since the ban on dependants came into force, with more than a fifth (22%) saying it has become much harder.
Secondly, several changes to the Immigration Rules in spring 2024 likely reduced the pool of care worker sponsors, by making it a requirement for sponsoring organisations in England to be registered with the Care Quality Commission (from 11 March 2024) and by increasing the annual salary requirement for care workers from £20,960 to £23,200 (from 4 April 2024).
Finally, the National Audit Office’s report on Skilled Workers visas highlights several ways in which the Home Office had ramped up compliance checks since 2023, in response to widespread concerns about labour exploitation on this route. Most notably, the Home Office “has more rigorously applied its ‘genuine vacancy’ test to check whether the vacancies employers claim to have do exist, and has introduced a ‘credibility’ test for applicants.” The cumulative effect of this policy change has been a reduction in the number of new licences issued, as well as widespread revocation of licences of existing sponsors in the care sector.
Skilled Worker visas also in decline
The number of Skilled Worker visas issued to main applicants also fell significantly for a third consecutive quarter, from a peak of 19,100 in Q2 2024, to 8,500 in Q1 2025. Overall, this reflects a 55% reduction.
Fewer Skilled Worker visas were granted for both degree-level occupations (RQF Levels 6+) and below degree-level occupations (see Fig. 2). However, the latter exhibited a greater reduction since Q2 2024, owing to Immigration Rule changes which from April 2024 raised the minimum salary requirement, and restricted the number of occupations eligible under the route.
Figure 2. Number of Skilled Worker visas issued by occupational skill level, 2023-2025
How immigration policy changes affected Skilled Worker visas
The Conservative government raised the salary requirement for a large number of occupations eligible for the Skilled Worker visa. The basic minimum threshold was hiked by 48%, from £26,200pa to £38,700pa. So-called ‘going rates’, applicable to higher-paid occupations, were also increased.
The government also replaced the ‘Shortage Occupation List’ of 53 lower-paid, but strategically important occupations eligible for the visa, with an Immigration Salary List, of just 23 professions. This was coupled with the removal of a 20% discount to the going rate for these roles, making some occupations see an 82% increase in the required salary.
Finally, salary thresholds were increased for various categories of applicants, who benefit from discounted rates, set at 70%-90% of the ‘standard going rate’. Examples include new entrants (those under 26 years of age), those with a STEM PhD-level qualification relevant to the role, recent graduates, and those in professional training.
If one thing is apparent from the steep decline in numbers of Skilled Worker visas issued, it is that employers have responded to the April 2024 salary changes by reducing the pace of overseas recruitment. This is likely to continue if, as the White Paper suggests, the government increases salary thresholds further and places greater conditions on accessing the immigration system in the first place. And yet, given unmet demand for skills across a range of industries, the government may not be able to cope with this drop in international recruitment either.
Shortages in lower-skilled occupations matter
Lower-skilled migrant workers are still sorely needed by employers who struggle to find the necessary skills domestically. Using the Occupations in Demand dataset, we find that one in seven Skilled Worker visas (14%) issued in the last two quarters for roles below degree-level, were in fact for occupations classed as in ‘critical demand’ (see Fig. 3). A further 49% of Skilled Worker visas issued for roles below degree-level were for occupations that had above average (‘elevated’) demand.
Figure 3. Skilled Worker visas issued, by occupational level of demand, Q4 2024-Q1 2025
Occupations at this skill level include sales and marketing associate professionals, STEM associate professionals, chefs, and various skilled tradesmen (e.g. vehicle mechanics and electricians, construction tradesmen). Many of these occupations are not only in-demand, but are also of strategic importance to the UK economy.
Take the government’s key initiative to get Britain building, for instance. Its own analysis shows that the creation of 1.5m new homes could contribute as much as £7.5bn to the economy over the next 10 years. However, it is difficult to see how the skills needed to achieve this aim can materialise domestically. In this year’s Spring Statement, the government pledged to fund routes for young people into the sector and train up to 60,000 more skilled tradesmen and engineers. While laudable, getting training programmes up and running, as well as bringing new entrants to required standards takes time. And the 60,000 figure does not come close to the 1.3m new skilled tradesmen the country will need to recruit in the following decade to meet its housebuilding targets.
Another good example is adult social care. International recruitment on the HCW visa meant that the number of non-EU migrant workers in the sector in England more than doubled between 2021-22 and 2023-24, from 140,000 to as many as 300,000. Nevertheless, with British staff leaving the workforce and demand for care ever-growing, vacancy rates have remained high. The latest Skills for Care data shows that the vacancy rate for care workers stood at 8.2% in March 2025, down from 10% a year earlier, but still well above the national average. With the supply of the international workforce severely reduced and domestic recruitment unlikely to surge anytime soon, it is unclear how the sector will meet burgeoning demand.
Squaring the circle
The government proposes in the immigration White Paper to institute a new Temporary Shortage List of sectors where employers will continue to be able to recruit workers from overseas, even for roles below graduate level.
According to the White Paper, the new Temporary Shortage List will “provide time limited access to the Points-Based immigration system”, and will only include sectors that are “key to the industrial strategy or delivering critical infrastructure, and following advice from the MAC”. The MAC, in turn, will have to consider different aspects of the workforce strategy before providing advice to the Home Secretary, including the underlying skills strategy, commitment to work with the DWP on a domestic labour strategy, and how the sector will manage the risk of worker exploitation.
This would appear to be a “have your cake and eat it” policy. Migration under 12 months is not counted towards net migration figures, so with the promise of future time-limited routes the government is simultaneously placating businesses, which need migrant workers, and critics, who want to see net migration drop at all costs. All-important details about the design of future low-skill migration are left to the MAC, giving ministers the space to talk tough now and work out the complicated details later. This isn’t sustainable.
Possible issues for employers
For employers, the addition of several unknowns into an already complicated mix of immigration policies will likely cause some alarm.
It is not immediately apparent from the White Paper which sectors and occupations will be considered strategic, and allowed on the Temporary Shortage list. It is not yet clear who will produce the sectoral strategy for the MAC to review, and how employers will have to demonstrate compliance with it.
Critically, businesses don’t know how many people they will be allowed to recruit under the new routes, how much they will have to earn, and how long they can work in the UK. Until these details are worked out, uncertainty will likely dampen business sentiment and frustrate investment.
Perhaps most importantly, the government’s reliance on time-limited visas could make things more precarious for migrant workers, undermining the broader objective to protect the vulnerable.
Time-limited visas could pose risks for workers
The government should consider at least three key risks in their design of future visa routes.
Power imbalance of sponsorship. Time and again research has shown that visa routes that tie migrant workers to a single employer carry an elevated risk of exploitation. Worried that speaking out will lead to them losing their visa (be it because the employer dismisses them or because the Home Office revokes the employer’s licence), migrant workers are less likely to report labour rights breaches, and more likely to acquiesce to precarious conditions.
The government should ensure that future work migration routes redress this power imbalance, by giving workers more practical flexibility to change employers, and ensuring that reporting exploitation does not affect their immigration status.
Cost for workers. Depending on workers’ country of origin, the costs of coming to the UK (namely visa fees, IHS, travel, and other relocation costs), can run into the thousands of pounds. This is even higher when accounting for the prevalence of illegitimate “middlemen” and recruitment costs which have become a staple in the international labour migration story. Relocation is therefore often funded through loans, which carry the risk of silencing the worker, who needs to earn money to pay back their creditors. On the Seasonal Worker visa, for instance, nearly half (48%) of workers were unable to fund their pre-arrival costs through savings alone. The government should ensure that future routes provide migrants with sufficient continuity of employment and income to make the journey financially viable.
Going further, the government should take steps to increasingly mandate adherence to the Employer Pays Principle (EPP), which provides that the costs of recruitment should be borne by the employer, including reimbursing workers where fees have been paid by them. Companies are already advised to follow EPP under the government’s updated Transparency in Supply Chains guidance, but this currently lacks teeth and should be placed on a more mandatory footing.
Ability to report non-compliance. Short-term routes can make it harder for workers to report and take action against employers who breach their rights. Previous research into time-limited visas has shown that their short-term nature disincentivises workers from speaking out about exploitation, as they hope to maximise their earnings in the little time they have in the UK.
Reporting non-compliance and potentially taking legal action is also a time-consuming process. Even if workers decide to progress legal claims from outside the UK, there are procedural barriers that can weaken their ability to substantiate their claims (e.g. the requirement for countries, at a diplomatic level, to positively approve giving evidence to a UK court or tribunal from overseas). Workers should be provided with the longer-term security they need to access their employment rights in practice - we’ve previously made the case for a UK Workplace Justice visa to facilitate exactly this.
Conclusion
Despite the divisive language of weaning British business of “cheap migrant labour”, it is unlikely that the government can deliver on the aims to support growth, hit housebuilding targets, and care for the vulnerable without the input of migrant workers. The immigration white paper alludes to that, in promising a new Temporary Shortage List of lower-skilled roles, but at this stage the paper opens more questions than it answers.
The government should carefully consider the risks, and work in consultation with migrants’ rights experts to ensure that future immigration policy mitigates them.
Without a doubt, the design of the work migration system needs to change. A wealth of research from charities, journalists, and the government itself has exposed the risks that employer sponsorship poses for workers. But in shooting the firing gun of change, the government should focus on how to safeguard workers, and support legitimate businesses. The current hyperfocus on numbers may well prove a costly distraction for all.
About the data
The Home Office publishes a quarterly statistics release that includes data on the number of visas granted, the type of visa and, in the case of Skilled Worker visas, the type of occupation the visa was granted for. This dataset uses the Standard Occupational Classification (SOC 2020), which categorises occupations in the UK on a four-point scale ranging from major groups (such as sales, marked as SOC 7), to units (such as Shopkeepers and owners, marked as SOC 7131). This is what enables us to say that, for example, that in 2024 a total of 1,487 Skilled Worker visas were issued for roles in sales. Get to the data.
To describe whether an occupation is in demand, we use the Occupations in demand index produced by the Department for Education (DfE). This methodology uses seven labour market indicators to rank the demand for each occupation across the UK labour market. The dataset includes three levels of demand: critical, elevated, and not in high demand. However, limitations apply. This dataset was first published in Q4 2024. Many occupations (including in construction and horticulture), are excluded. Another limitation is that visa density (calculated as the number of visa applications as a proportion of working age employment at a 4-digit SOC level for occupations across the UK between April 2023 and March 2024) is one of the seven indicators used to calculate demand, which can lead to some circularity (meaning that while we use this index to understand which visas are granted to occupations in demand, visa grants are already part of how the index is calculated Learn more here and in the DfE technical note.
To describe the level of qualification required for an occupation, the government’s immigration white paper refers to the ONS Regulated Qualifications Framework (RQF). This is a six-point scale that ranges from Level 1 (basic knowledge and skills, associated with GCSEs grades D-G), to Level 8 (the equivalent of a doctoral degree). On the RQF, Level 6 refers to a Bachelor’s degree or equivalent. In 2015 the RQF replaced a previous categorisation, known as the NQF, but the categories are broadly similar and many datasets continue to refer to the NQF.
The Home Office dataset does not specify the RQF level of each occupation visas were granted for, but we can infer it from two further occupational datasets.
The ONS have classified SOC 2020 occupations into four skill levels. Skill level 4, the highest on this scale, broadly maps onto RQF level 6 (degree level or above). The Occupations in Demand dataset produced by the Department of Education, in turn, uses this skills framework to describe each occupational code, which enables us then to infer the level of qualification associated with each occupation.
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