- Government borrowing would be higher without EU migrants
- EU immigrants less likely to claim benefit and more likely to be in work than UK born citizens
- Workers from established EU countries more likely to earn more than British workers and work in more senior jobs
LONDON, Sept. 10, 2013 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- An EU exit or tighter measures to control EU immigration will restrict economic growth and worsen the UK's public finances, a new report from Harvey Nash and the Centre for Economics and Business Research (Cebr) shows.
Tighter immigration controls will result in a loss of 2 per cent from GDP by 2050, £60billion in real terms. And without migrants from the EU helping to off-set the UK's ageing population, government borrowing would be 0.5% higher.
According to the report migrant workers are more likely to be in work (63.3 per cent) than UK-born citizens (56.2 per cent) and more economically active - 69.8 per cent of non-UK EU immigrants compared to 63 per cent of UK-born citizens.
UK businesses rely on a significant number of EU immigrant workers. Between 2003-2013, the number of non-UK EU-born citizens in employment in the UK more than doubled from 762,000 to 1,647,000. Immigrant EU workers play important roles in several UK sectors. In the financial and business services sectors, non-UK EU-born citizens make up 6.4 per cent of the total workforce while in the manufacturing sector they make up 6.7 per cent.
Those migrants from the established EU 14 countries* are more likely to be in higher managerial or professional occupations and they also earn 7.6% (£2,035) on average more than UK workers. This means that on average they are more productive than their UK counterparts and indicates they play a significant role in the UK economy.