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27/02/2017
A reduction in migration into the UK post-Brexit will exacerbate the financial stresses and strains caused by the UK’s ageing workforce, according to Mercer. Its workforce monitor predicts that from 2015 to 2030, and in all scenarios, the UK faces at best very slow growth, or even shrinkage, in the working population.
Since 2013, EU and non-EU born immigration into the UK has filled a gap left by the ageing of the nation’s UK-born workforce. For example, if there is an outflow of EU nationals caused by an unwelcome social environment post-Brexit, combined with a net outflow of UK-born workers, the total working population will shrink by 700,000 to 32.6 million.
The inability of certain sectors of the UK economy to fill roles could be dramatic; for example, the Campaign for Science and Engineering (cited in the Mercer research) estimates that a quarter of academic staff in UK universities are non-UK nationals.
Julia Howes, specialist in workforce analytics at Mercer, said:
‘The UK has made a decision and we now need to respond to it as best we can. The big question for society is how we handle the ratio of young to old.’