> There are no labour shortages that justify 750k immigrants in a single year.
Actually, yes. There was a very severe reduction in labour market participation due to the pandemic. The reasons for this are complex, varied and in many ways the fault of the government, but the upshot is that we lost ~700,000 employees from the labour market over the course of 2021/22. Job vacancies have declined sharply since mid-2022, but we still have about 150,000 more vacancies than we did pre-pandemic.
Sorry, but no-one reasonable can believe that this is an accurate representation of the situation.
This just shows the state of the economy where, on the one hand the government is happy to use weak health reasons not to officially count people as unemployed [1], and thus to claim low unemployment while, on the other hand, importing more people, which only keeps productivity and wages down, and keeps the housing market hot.
This also allows the government to claim that the economy is strong when, in fact GDP per capita is going down.
The UK has a big issue with immigration in that it overly depends on it instead of fixing its domestic issues.
This just shows the state of the economy where, on the one hand the government is happy to use weak health reasons not to officially count people as unemployed [1], and thus to claim low unemployment while, on the other hand, importing more people, which only keeps productivity and wages down, and keeps the housing market hot.
This also allows the government to claim that the economy is strong when, in fact GDP per capita is going down.
The UK has a big issue with immigration in that it overly depends on it instead of fixing its domestic issues.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/dec/24/500000-under...