The UK’s last six prime ministers have all promised to reduce migration – and now it is happening. The most recent figures show that net migration (the number of people coming to the UK minus the number leaving) was at 171,000 in 2025. This is the lowest point since 2012.
Falling migration may be a political win in a world where both the right and left see it as a top national concern and promise tough measures to “secure borders”. But it also has implications for the economy, including worsening existing labour shortages and constraining future growth.
Projections from the Office for Budget Responsibility associate lower net migration with declining GDP. This is because migrants tend to be of working age and thus contribute to productivity and taxation.
Countries across Europe, including the UK, are dealing with acute labour and skills shortages. This is largely driven by three interacting forces: ageing populations, a mismatch between skills and demand, and poor working conditions. On top of this, the UK has to face the effects of Brexit, which caused a significant shortfall of EU workers.
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Both the EU and UK face labour shortages in healthcare, long-term care, hospitality, and skilled trades such as bricklaying, welding and tiling. All are sectors that tend to employ high numbers of migrants.
The UK’s health and social care sector is a particularly useful example. Shortages in the sector worsened in 2021 due to a combination of precarious and unsafe working conditions during the pandemic, and post-Brexit recruitment restrictions. The UK government responded with a dedicated visa scheme, lowering salary thresholds and visa fees to boost international recruitment.
Yet this resulted in widespread exploitation of workers, mostly because migrant workers’ right to live and work in the UK was tied to a specific job and sponsor. Several recruiting companies were found to have broken the law. At the same time, public concern about migration was rising, fuelled by hostile political narratives. The health and care worker visa scheme was subsequently closed.
Today, the sector is still struggling to fill vacancies. This will be further exacerbated by the ageing population and increased demand for care.
Alternative solutions
In the current system, migrant workers are essential to fill shortages and sustain host countries’ economies. European governments seem to be more aware of this than the UK. Even those with a clearly hostile rhetoric on migration are quietly opening to labour mobility from other countries.
Italy has talent partnerships with Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco, which aim to train workers for the Italian market. In 2023, Italy also signed an international agreement with India, and in May 2025 a Memorandum of Understanding with Pakistan. This non-binding agreement signals mutual interest in building a future partnership.
Hungary, notorious for former prime minister Viktor Orban’s adverse stance to migration, has been one of the bigger issuers of employment permits when compared to other EU countries. It ranked 7th out of 27 EU countries in 2023.
The social and economic threats caused by insufficient migration levels are not usually part of political conversations about immigration. But when anti-migration leaders come to power, they are forced to face that their electoral promises could lead to recession – so they may try to respond to employers’ economic needs without upsetting the public.
One way they do this is through talent partnerships. EU Talent Partnerships are structured frameworks between EU member states and partner countries that combine labour mobility with capacity-building in the partner countries.
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I took part in a recent research project analysing how such a partnership, between Pakistan and five EU countries, can be taken forward. Our work, which will soon be published, showed that governments and employers have shared interest in this partnership. Political will is key – but there are challenges to making it work in practice.
First, prospective workers must receive the correct training in their country of origin to be equipped with the skills required in the destination country. Addressing this requires coordination on curricula, and skills recognition between the two partner countries.
Second, prospective workers often face red tape due to poor resources in embassies and visa centres. Workers who have completed their training and already received a job offer often have to go through complex visa procedures, with few appointments available and long waiting times.
Third, some countries manage labour migration through entry quotas. For example, capping the number of migrant workers per sector and type of work. These caps are consistently lower than demand, which stops many employers from taking part. Eurobarometer, a series of public opinion surveys conducted by the EU, reports that over half of European small and medium enterprises perceive the process of hiring outside the EU as difficult.
Finally, talent partnerships are not always set up to support migrant workers while settling in the host country. For instance, through providing language training, helping them find accommodation and access services, or helping them integrate into workplaces. Such support is key to allow migrant workers to adjust to a new place of living and know their rights, while also increasing public acceptance.
Talent partnerships have great potential to succeed in supporting economies. If done right, they can also be beneficial for countries of origin, increasing the amount of money, knowledge and skills that people transfer back home. Ideally, they are also good for migrant workers, who can have access to employment opportunities through safe and legal routes.
Such partnerships require a financial, technical and political investment from the countries involved. But they also require changing the narrative on migration. A simplistic focus on getting the numbers down fails to acknowledge the importance of a well-managed labour migration system for the economy.
