Skilled Worker visa numbers at a three-year low, but what’s the cost?
After a series of restrictions to migrant workers’ rights and successive increases to employer costs, the number of Skilled Worker visas issued to foreign nationals coming to the UK to work is now at its lowest level since 2021.
If the government’s plan was to reduce immigration, it’s working. But as vacancies in critical sectors - including construction - remain unfilled, and the risks of labour exploitation inherent in sponsorship continue, we find that behind the politics of lowering numbers, there are real human and economic costs. More tough talk on migration will do nothing to address this looming problem.
Skilled Worker visas at three-year low
With 11,733 Skilled Worker visas issued in Q3 2025 to main applicants, this is the lowest quarterly figure for work visas granted to migrant workers coming to the UK in three years (see Figure 1).
This trend was largely driven by a sharp drop in Health and Care Worker visas. Successive governments’ decisions to restrict care workers’ right to bring dependents, increase minimum salary requirements, and ramp up compliance checks against employers have reduced the number of Health and Care Worker visas to a slither - from a peak of 45,071 in Q3 2023, to just 2,628 in Q3 2025.
Skilled Worker visa numbers issued under the general route have also more than halved from a peak of 21,035 in Q1 2024, to just 9,105 in Q3 2025, mostly due to a significant increase in the salary requirement from April 2024, and successive increases in employer sponsorship costs.
Figure 1. Grants of entry clearance on the Skilled Worker route, main applicants, 2022-2025
A timeline of key changes to the Skilled Worker route
6 February 2024: Immigration Healthcare Surcharge (IHS), which must be paid by applicants for each year that a Skilled Worker visa is issued for and enables access to NHS services, is increased. Base rate rises by 66%, from £624 per person per year, to £1,035. The reduced rate (i.e. for children in this context) rises by 65%, from £470 per person per year, to £776.
11 March 2024: Government bans migrant care and senior care workers from bringing dependants, unless they already hold a Health and Care Worker visa. Additionally, all new care sector sponsors in England must be registered with the Care Quality Commission.
4 April 2024: Significant increase in the required salary threshold for all Skilled Worker occupations - the standard threshold rises from £26,200 to £38,700 per year, a nearly 50% increase. ‘Going rates’ for occupations are also increased, from the 25th to the 50th percentile of earnings.
The government replaces the Shortage Occupation List with an Immigration Salary List, reducing the number of roles eligible for a lower salary threshold.
9 April 2025: Cost of Certificate of Sponsorship (CoS), payable by employers, increases by 120%, from £239 to £525 per worker.
Minimum salary threshold is increased from £23,200 to £25,000 per year.
22 July 2025: Government bans international recruitment of lower-skilled migrant workers. In-country recruitment of care workers is severely restricted. International recruitment of medium-skilled migrant workers is only permitted for a select number of occupations (on an interim temporary shortage list), but they are banned from bringing dependants. Those already in the UK are unaffected.
Salary thresholds are increased, with the standard threshold rising from £38,700 to £41,700 per year.
16 December 2025: Immigration Skills Charge, payable by employers for each year an employee is sponsored for, raised significantly.
Critical medium-skilled vacancies at risk
If the government’s plan was to reduce migration at all costs, it’s working. But low numbers of migrants don’t spell good news for businesses that have historically experienced shortages, and are now finding it even harder to fill vacancies. This includes medium-skilled roles critical to the delivery of the Industrial Strategy, where domestic labour supply has failed to keep up with demand.
In the 12 months to September 2025, just 7,572 Skilled Worker visas were issued for the 82 medium-skilled roles the MAC determined to be ‘potentially crucial’ to the Industrial Strategy (see Figure 2). This includes just 344 to engineering technicians, 311 to welders, and 240 to data analysts. New rules are likely to cut numbers yet further.
Figure 2. Grants of entry clearance on the Skilled Worker route, ‘potentially crucial’ middle-skilled roles, Q4 2024-Q3 2025
Judging from available vacancies data, the inflow of skilled workers is hardly a match for what businesses need.
Take construction, which is crucial to the government’s pledge to deliver more housing. The Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) estimates that 61,000 new construction workers would need to be recruited each year to meet the government’s housebuilding target of 1.5m new homes by 2030. This is about 37 times greater than the number of Skilled Worker visas (1,660) issued for the construction sector in the year to September 2025, and domestic workers are unlikely to fill the remaining gap.
The temporary shortage list won’t fix the vacancy crisis - but it will make the risk of exploitation higher
Since 22 July 2025 the government has required migrant workers on the Skilled Worker route to be in a graduate-level role (RQF Level 6+). An exception was made for a new temporary shortage list of 52 medium-skilled occupational codes that will continue to be open to migrant workers (although these workers will be unable to bring dependants). Examples of roles on the list include logistics managers, visual artists, data analysts, ship builders and repairers, and various construction tradespeople.
The list is unlikely to meet industry needs. Sponsorship continues to remain complex and costly for employers, and particularly difficult to navigate by small companies, who find it harder to fulfil Home Office compliance requirements (see our research with employers in the care sector).
Take the construction sector again, which in the 12 months to September 2025 recruited for 32 of the 52 occupations on the temporary shortage list. Construction comprises a majority of small and micro companies that rely on self-employed contractors, and has the highest rate of insolvencies of any sector. As we have argued in a previous briefing, this makes it hardly suitable for sponsorship (where migrants must be employees).
What’s more concerning is that this carveout for medium-skilled roles also risks increasing the risk of labour exploitation. The Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) agrees, stating: “the current sponsorship model may “be a concern in industries with higher risks of exploitation, such as construction.”
Employer-tied visas are already premised on a dangerous power imbalance. Additionally, migrant workers employed in jobs on this list don’t have a right to bring a partner. Our research has found that when exploitation arises, partners play a critical role by adding another source of income and psychological support - so depriving workers of the right to bring a partner is akin to removing even the thinnest of safety nets. To date, the government has done nothing to address these newly compounded risks for medium-skilled migrant workers.
Clashing policy objectives
As the latest data points to another reduction in entry clearance visas, it is hard not to wonder: is this really what the government is trying to achieve?
The Chancellor is desperately trying to increase business confidence, after a series of disappointing forecasts and a worrying 0.1% growth. The low numbers of visas issued for critical shortage roles raises serious questions about whether businesses will have the labour they need to achieve the growth this government so keenly pursues.
Meanwhile, none of the risks of sponsorship widely documented have been addressed. Having acknowledged these risks in the white paper from May, and having pledged to consider routes that give migrant workers more flexibility, the Home Office now appears to have turned its attention elsewhere - to the radical politics of restricting settlement routes.
In a shock announcement, the Home Secretary recently said she wants to double the time that migrants to the UK must spend in the country before they can settle, from five years to 10 years, with a base rate of as much 15 years for people in low and medium-skilled roles, and a penalty of as much as 10 years for migrants who claimed public funds.
The most radical immigration policy change in a generation, this was explicitly introduced with the aim to reduce migrant numbers. But as the data shows clearly, numbers are already rapidly decreasing, and would continue to do so regardless.
It is hard to shake the sense that the government is making immigration policy decisions in an effort to appear tough - but in doing so, it is gambling with migrant workers’ welfare, and with its own manifesto priorities to build more houses and grow the economy.
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