A coincidence? Youth unemployment rises 450,000 in the time it takes 600,000 migrant workers to flock to the UK



Migrant workers from the EU are keeping young Britons out of jobs, new figures suggest.

Campaign group Migration Watch UK said statistics released today show the number of migrants working in the UK who were born in Eastern Europe rose by 600,000 since the so-called A8 countries joined the EU in May 2004 while youth unemployment rose by almost 450,000 in the same period.

Sir Andrew Green, the campaign group's chairman, said it would be 'a very remarkable coincidence if there was no link at all between them'.

Dole queue: Youth unemployment rose by almost 450,000 since May 2004

Migrants from the A8 countries - Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania - 'have tended to be disproportionately young, well-educated, prepared to work for low wages and imbued with a strong work ethic', he said.

Youth unemployment in the UK increased from 575,000 in the first quarter of 2004 to 1,016,000 in the third quarter of 2011, figures from the Office for National Statistics show.

Over the same period, the number of workers from the A8 grew by 600,000.

Immigration: While the number of young Brits out of work has gone up, the number of migrants working in the UK who were born in Eastern Europe rose by 600,000

Sir Andrew conceded that measuring any impact of immigration on youth unemployment was 'not an exact science'.

He said: 'Correlation is not, of course, proof of causation but, given the positive employability characteristics and relative youth of migrants from these countries, it is implausible and counter-intuitive to conclude - as the previous Government and some economists have done - that A8 migration has had virtually no impact on UK youth unemployment in this period.

'We hear a great deal from employers about the value of immigrant labour, especially from Eastern Europe, but there are also costs some of which have undoubtedly fallen on young British born workers.'