Foreigners get 77% of new jobs in Britain as too many of us live on benefits

Nearly eight out of 10 people starting a new job in the past three months were born overseas, according to official statistics.

The details emerged as Britain was buoyed by its biggest jobs gain for 21 years, with the overall number out of work dropping 49,000 to 2.46 million.

But British-born workers are being left behind. Of 188,000 extra people winning jobs in the three months to June some 145,000 – or 77 per cent – were born abroad.

Year-on-year figures painted an equally damning picture, revealing that the number of British-born workers fell by 15,000 while the number of foreigners in jobs rose by 114,000.

Critics said the figures showed many Britons preferred to claim handouts rather than work for a living.

Matthew Elliott, chairman of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “For too many British families, the welfare system means it isn’t worth the ­trouble to work. Losing benefits and paying taxes means that working for £5.80 an hour at the minimum wage can be worth as little as 26p.

“It is hardly surprising that reduces the number of Britons willing to work and leaves employers looking to immigrants who aren’t trapped in benefit dependency.”

Government sources stressed the Office for National Statistics figures for the second quarter of 2010 were not seasonally adjusted to take account of the traditional increase in employment at this time of year, when students and others take up jobs such as in agriculture, and would not match headline employment statistics also released yesterday.

But the Department for Work and Pensions admitted that a rise in the number of people in work was “largely driven by a rise in the employment of non-UK nationals”.

The seasonally adjusted jump of 184,000 meant the overall number of those out of work dropped 49,000 to 2.46 million. However, the raw data showed the number in work was ­actually 4,000 more.

Sir Andrew Green, chairman of the pressure group Migrationwatch said the proportion of extra jobs taken by foreign-born workers was “astonishingly high”. He added: “It is further evidence that immigration really does affect British-born workers.”

Comparing April to June this year with the same period last year suggested an even more startling picture, because while the number of British-born workers fell by 15,000 over the year to 25.08 million, the number of those in jobs who were born abroad rose 114,000 to 3.85 million – up from just over two million when Labour came to power in 1997. That meant they more than accounted for the 101,000 overall increase in the number of people in employment compared with last year.

Some of the foreign-born workers will by now be UK citizens but the ­figures analysed by nationality were so similar they suggested the bulk of the extra workers were recent arrivals, Migrationwatch pointed out.

By nationality, the figures showed that of the 101,000 extra people working between April and June this year compared with the same period last year, 4,000 were British passport holders and 97,000 were foreign nationals.

Previous figures have shown that in October 1997, British-born workers made up 92.5 per cent of the workforce. That had fallen to 87.1 per cent by the same period last year, while the proportion of jobs held by foreign-born workers soared from 7.5 per cent to 12.9 per cent, nearly one in eight.

Last week the Daily Express report­ed how Romanian President Traian Basescu praised his citizens for getting jobs in countries whose native-born workers would not take low-paid positions because they were better off on benefits.

Migrationwatch today publishes a survey comparing conditions in the 50 local authority areas with the highest net immigration with those in the 50 areas with the lowest. Those with the highest rate of net international migration showed a 1.7 per cent higher unemployment rate on average and a 4.7 per cent lower employment rate.

Immigration Minister Damian Green said: “It is our aim to reduce the level of net migration to the levels of the 1990s – tens of thousands each year, not hundreds of thousands.

“Introducing a limit on migrants from outside Europe is just one of the ways we intend to achieve this.’’