Skilled worker visa applications halve after salary threshold rise, Home Office figures show

Applications for skilled worker visas fell by 51% in the year to September, from 211,000 to 104,000, according to Home Office figures published on Thursday, the first full year since the minimum salary for most roles rose to £41,700 and the care worker route was closed to new overseas recruits.

The figures suggest that net migration, which peaked at 906,000 in 2023 and fell to 431,000 last year, will drop further when the next official estimate is published in November. Applications from dependants fell by 68% after rules preventing most care workers and students from bringing family members took effect.

The fall was sharpest in hospitality, where applications dropped by 79%, in care, where the route is now closed, and in construction, down 44%. Applications in health, which is exempt from the higher threshold, fell by 9%, and in IT and finance by 12%. Indian nationals remained the largest group of applicants, followed by Nigerians and Filipinos, though applications from all three fell by more than half.

In Fort William, Fraser McLeod, who owns a 48-room hotel and two restaurants, said he had 11 unfilled posts going into the winter and had closed one restaurant for three days a week. “The last Spanish chef I recruited was on £29,000. I would need to pay £41,700 for a visa now, which is more than I pay my general manager,” he said. “There are 10,000 people in Fort William and they all already have jobs. The government seems to think there is a queue of Highlanders waiting to wash pots. There is not.”

The Home Office said the fall was “exactly what the changes were designed to achieve” and that employers should recruit and train domestically. A spokesperson said the government had committed £600m to skills training in sectors that had relied on overseas labour and that “the era of businesses reaching for a visa before they reach for a training budget is over”.

Dr Ana Petrescu, of the Migration Policy Centre, a research group at the University of Edinburgh, said the figures confirmed that the salary threshold was “the most effective lever ministers have ever pulled” but that the effect was uneven. “In London a £41,700 threshold excludes almost nobody in professional work. In the Highlands it excludes almost everybody,” she said. “This is a national policy with a regional bill, and Scotland, Cornwall and the Lake District are paying it.”

The Scottish government has renewed its call for a separate rural visa pilot, which the Home Office has twice rejected. Business groups in Wales and the south-west have made similar requests. The Migration Advisory Committee is due to report in December on whether a lower threshold for specified regions and sectors would be workable.

Care providers, meanwhile, said that the closure of their route had coincided with the new fair pay agreement, and that the two together would “either fix the sector or finish it”.