Confusingly, there is no single definition of what constitutes a low-skilled job or a low-skilled worker.
The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), for example, defines low-skilled on the basis of the person (and their education level) rather than on the basis of the job.
But that doesn’t necessarily capture what is happening in the UK labour market, where (anecdotally at least) many people with high levels of education are performing relatively unskilled jobs such as driving taxis or making coffee.
Official government statistics are based on a skills classification formula put together by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), which is based on the time necessary for someone to learn how to perform the task required of them, whether through formal qualifications or on-the-job experience.
This is also used as a basis for deciding whether low-skilled workers from outside the EU can come to the UK.
The latest figures we have come from a report issued in 2014 by the Migration Advisory Committee (an independent public body that advises the government) using 2013 statistics.
It says an estimated 870,000 citizens from other EU countries were employed in low-skilled jobs.
That’s roughly 6% of all low-skilled employment, which doesn’t sound like much.
But compared with the most recent net migration figures we have (246,000 in the year ending March 2017), 870,000 is obviously a significant number.
Many business owners argue that it is so high because the demand to employ that many people exists.
Interestingly, (again these are estimates put together by the Migration Advisory Committee in 2014) about 60% of migrants in low-skilled jobs come from non-EU countries: roughly 1.2 million people.
Unlike the arrivals from the EU, though, most of them came to the UK at least a decade ago.
Most low-skilled migrants who came to the UK between 2004 and 2014 were from Central and Eastern Europe.
BBC
