Our Take on the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) Report on the Impact of Workers from the European Economic Area

The verdict is out. After much anticipation, the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) have published their review on the impact of EEA nationals on the UK labour market. The report has both good and bad news for recruiters.

The good news is that the MAC have busted a number of the myths surrounding the impact of EEA migration on the UK labour market. They found no evidence that EEA migration has reduced employment opportunities, wages or training for the UK-born, but found evidence that it has boosted productivity and lowered prices for personal services.

The MAC also made some sensible recommendations for reform if the government were to extend the non-EU visa system to EU nationals, including removing the Tier 2 visa cap, making it easier for those on Tier 2 to move between jobs, adding more ‘medium-skilled’ roles to the Shortage Occupation List and potentially removing the obligation on employers to undertake the Resident Labour Market Test.

However, the bad news is for ‘lower-skilled’ routes. The MAC concluded that any new system should focus on ‘higher-skilled’ migrants and are not convinced of a need for a low-skills route. They propose that lower-skilled migrants could be recruited through a Seasonal Agricultural Workers Scheme (SAWS), extending the current Tier 5 Youth Mobility visa to the EU and family migration. There is little discussion of what impact this would have on finding workers in these sectors.

EU migrants play an important role in a number of ‘lower-skilled’ sectors and employers and recruiters will struggle to fill these roles if there isn’t a route for low-skilled migration post Brexit.

Our report Ready, Willing and Able? highlighted that while EU workers make up 7 per cent of the UK’s labour market overall, they are particularly over-represented in low-skilled roles, accounting for 15 per cent of workers. In temporary roles this is higher according to our report Short-term labour for long term growth.

The government will now respond to the MAC’s recommendations. We are calling for careful consideration of how to create a system that allows employers to recruit for roles at all skill levels based on the needs of the economy, not just the ‘brightest and the best’. In the short-term, we are urging them to include a comprehensive migration and mobility deal in the UK’s exit agreement with the EU.

We will be raising our concerns over the potential impact of these recommendations in the coming months – we’d be interested to hear from you about what impact you think this might have – philip.campbell@rec.uk.com