UK employers fear impact of post-Brexit EU migration drop-off

UK employers are concerned that future restrictions on the migration of workers from the European Economic Area (EEA) into Britain could impact their chances of getting the best talent.

This finding, published in the Migration Advisory Committee’s (MAC) latest interim report, highlighted the consternation that post-Brexit worker movement is causing employers – concluding that “it is unsurprising that business does not welcome restrictions on their ability to hire, seeing such restrictions as likely to make a hard job harder.”

In particular, the report highlighted how ‘low-skilled’ sectors, which rely on workers from member states which joined the EU after 2004, might lose one of their biggest labour sources.

A perfect storm of the revived Eurozone, rising incomes in Eastern Europe and the Brexit vote mean businesses might face greater competition for the labour they have recently relied on.