Net migration rises
Nigel Williams, 28 November 2013
Fewer people are leaving the country. That is the message from long-term migration statistics for the year to June 2013. We can guess at the reasons. The test cricket team were getting good results, the economy was finally starting to grow, European economies remained in crisis, Royal Mail was still in private hands and energy companies had not announced their tariffs for the coming winter. Emigration was down around 8 per cent, to the lowest level since 2001. Since 2008, the greater component of emigration has been non-British citizens leaving. They are not necessarily going back to their home countries but it is convenient shorthand to describe them as ‘returning.’
Data derived from Office for National Statistics Long-Term International Migration
The proportion of British citizens returning home rose during the financial crisis and has fallen back under the coalition government. People of all citizenships migrate both long- and short-term, for reasons of study, work and long-term settlement. If the proportion returning falls, it means among other factors that the average length of stay is increasing.
As ONS are at pains to point out, there are dangers in reading too much into short-term changes in a sample survey than can result from random sampling. Although more EU citizens arrived in the year to June 2013 than in the year previous to that, the increase was not statistically significant. More positive was the observation of an increase in the number of EU 15 nationals arriving for work related reasons. Despite all the argument about arrivals from recent accession countries, the observed increase is from the established economies of northern, western and southern Europe. The overall graph of reasons for migration shows people arriving for definite jobs or looking for work both rising slightly and the number stating formal study as their reason falling sharply, returning to levels of five years ago.
Data derived from Office for National Statistics Long-Term International Migration
Any target to reduce a measure such as net migration continues to be affected by many different components. Even when the attention is on reducing one kind of migration from one particular region, the measure can still rise as a result of people arriving from elsewhere or simply because fewer UK citizens choose to leave. One headline story contains hundreds of thousands of individual circumstances.