LONDON: The vast majority of employment growth was driven by non-UK nationals in the final three months of 2016 compared with a year earlier, the latest official figures on the labour market revealed.
Of the 303,000 more people in work between October and December compared with a year earlier, 233,000 were non-UK nationals, taking the total to 3.48 million according to the Office for National Statistics. UK nationals working in Britain increased by 70,000 over the same period to 28.44 million. Over the past two decades, the number of non-UK nationals working in Britain has increased by more than a million, taking the proportion of the workforce from 3.8% to 10.9%, partly reflecting the expansion of the EU as new member states were admitted.