April 24th, 2024 at 10:33 am

UK Immigration Changes and its Impacts on the UK Tech Industry 2024

In this blog, we’ll look at how the impending immigration changes in the UK are affecting the tech sector. The government is preparing to make public its intentions to significantly alter the immigration system, with finalization anticipated in 2024. This post will concentrate on the difficulties these modifications present for the tech industry.

It is certainly a given that the changes will lead to decreased migration, but they will provide an equal challenge to industries that depend on the sponsorship system to compensate for a shortage of competent workers in the labor market.

Because of the skills imbalance in the UK’s labor supply, many tech businesses turn to sponsorship to fill positions that are critical to their business. The entire sponsorship wage threshold will increase from 38,700 British Pounds as part of the upcoming adjustment, and the Shortage Occupation List—a list of jobs with little domestic demand—will be removed.

Rather than being placed on the Shortage Occupation List, these positions have the option of a 20% pay reduction. This time, the immigration salary list has been approved, although it only includes half of the roles from the previous list.

All jobs on this new list are eligible for a salary discount of up to 20%, although it doesn’t appear that any tech jobs are included. Several IT jobs, including web design and development roles, IT programmers, software developers, and engineers, were previously listed as shortage occupations.

Because of this inclusion, the sponsorship minimum wage was dropped to 27,200 British Pounds for software developers and programmers. However, effective April 4th, the minimum pay for sponsoring individuals in these occupations is 38,700 British Pounds, as no Tech roles are included in the new immigration salary list.

Further Details

To justify this omission, the Migration Advisory Committee points out that, according to data from the Office for National Statistics, the median wage in the tech industry is more than £38,700, meaning that it is not eligible for a salary reduction.

Crowdfunding may pose a challenge for startup companies as they must find a way to bridge the gap, even though established businesses will undoubtedly have offered their employees salaries that exceed the sponsorship amount. This means that there won’t be any surprise if the number of hires and expenditures increases dramatically.

The world’s talent will not want to come to the UK due to the new policy, and since the UK government is the policy leader, this will likely lead to further price increases and a transformation in the recruitment process as employers seek out other ways to draw and keep talent. One possible approach to assist recent graduates in entering the workforce would be to establish graduate programs.