LinkedIn reports more of its UK members migrating to the EU

There are concerns in the United Kingdom (UK) today over growing evidence of an exodus of skilled labour migrating to the European Union (EU) territories.

This state of affairs has been corroborated by the networking website, LinkedIn, which is reporting that its database is showing more of its UK members leaving for the EU after the coronavirus and Brexit sent shockwaves through the local labour market. The data collected from the period March 16, 2020 – March 16, 2021, revealed that more Britons left the UK over the past year than those arriving.

This migration pattern has already caught the attention of the UK authorities, which have noted that the exodus has accelerated since the start of this year. This has come about even as net migration from countries outside the EU remained positive.

The current situation is indicative of a broad reshaping of the UK workforce that could have implications for its planned economic recovery, as the nation emerges from its worst recession in three centuries.

Assessing Britain’s labour exodus

The LinkedIn findings add anecdotal evidence to the debate about how many people may have left the UK. Some economists have estimated that more than one million foreign-born workers may have left in 2020, but government data on Tuesday indicated a drop of less than 180,000.

However, the biggest net outflows of LinkedIn members were to Germany, France and Spain. Inflows came from India, Nigeria and South Africa, with the software and IT sector experiencing the biggest gain in non-EU workers.

LinkedIn Senior Economist Mariano Mamertino explained to Bloomberg that “these trends are accelerating”, noting that, “we’re seeing two diverging trends: net-migration losses for the UK with the rest of the EU, and net-migration gains for the UK with non-EU countries”.

Now after three lockdowns to control the coronavirus and tighter restrictions on immigration, economists are starting to ask whether the UK will have enough workers to fill the jobs once COVID-19 rules relax again.

Migration data have indicated that more people moved to the UK from the US than the other way around over the last year, reversing the previous trend.