British nationals accounted for just one in five job additions to UK payrolls over the past 12 years, while non-EU workers filled the majority of new positions, according to analysis by the Centre for Social Justice.
Between 2014 and the end of 2025, approximately 734,000 British citizens entered HM Revenue and Customs' Paye system, the centre-right think tank found. In the same period, 2.5 million non-EU nationals and 408,000 EU workers joined the tax records. The trend accelerated notably after 2020.
The CSJ's State of Dependency report warns that successive governments have relied on low-skilled migration to fill employment gaps while domestic workers have been left without work and pushed toward welfare support.
Regional variations reveal stark disparities. In Scotland, the number of British employees on Paye fell by 53,000 since 2020, while non-EU nationals on payroll increased by more than 153,000. In London over the same period, UK nationals on the system dropped by 26,500 as non-EU nationals rose by 407,000. Nine of the UK's 12 regions and nations saw total British nationals on company payrolls decline between 2020 and 2025.
Despite these shifts, British citizens still represent the overwhelming majority of payroll employees. As of December 2025, approximately 25.6 million Britons were registered under Paye out of a total of 32 million workforce entries, HMRC data shows.
The CSJ acknowledged that immigration over the past two decades supported overall economic growth, but noted it masked slower GDP growth per person.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith, Conservative former work and pensions secretary and chair of the CSJ's investigation, said the report demonstrates the crisis extends beyond the benefit system. "Successive governments have used welfare over decades to compensate parts of the country for economic failure rather than creating the conditions for prosperity," he said. "Compounding this, ministers have repeatedly pulled the easy lever of immigration rather than providing a better deal for left behind communities." Duncan Smith called for welfare reform, immigration policy and regional growth to be treated as connected challenges.