|
|
|
|
|
Britons 'squeezed out of workforce by foreigners', says Treasury MATTHEW HICKLEY Foreign-born workers are taking hundreds of thousands of jobs each year previously filled by British-born employees, Treasury figures reveal. In the past five years the immigrant workforce has grown by almost a million, while the number of native-born workers has plummeted by around half a million. That means immigrants have accounted not only for every additional job created but also for huge numbers of jobs which used to be done by native-born workers. The startling findings from an Office for National Statistics survey raise questions over Gordon Brown's recent pledge to provide "British jobs for British workers".
They also increase pressure on the Government following years of claims that foreign workers were urgently needed to fill supposed gaps in the workforce. The shift to foreign-born workers has accelerated in the three years since EU expansion gave millions of Eastern Europeans the right to settle and work here. The native-born workforce is now shrinking at a rate of more than a quarter of a million each year, and the number of immigrant workers is growing faster.
|
||||
