Shortage occupations - list published

Tier 2 of the United Kingdom Border Agency’s Points Based System becomes “live” in November.  It will replace the current work permits system to enable skilled migrant workers to apply to enter the UK. 

All applicants have to be sponsored by their potential employers, who have to hold Sponsorship licences.  Licensed Sponsors can provide people they wish to employ with Certificates of Sponsorship, without which applications for a visa as a Tier 2 migrant worker will not be accepted. 

Tier 2 will apply to three categories of skilled migrant worker:

•    those whose work is identified as a shortage occupation,

•    existing employees whose employers wish to transfer them to their UK based branch (known as “inter company transfers”)  and

•    those whose potential employers can show that there is no suitably qualified worker from the UK or the European Economic Area (“the EEA”) who can fill the vacancy. 

The bulk of applications will be for jobs in the last category.  Sponsors must complete a Resident Labour Market Test (“RLMT”), which involves advertising the position for at least two weeks to ensure that resident workers will have the opportunity to apply for the job before a migrant worker is recruited. 

Because their area of work has already been identified as such migrant workers required for shortage occupations will not have to conduct an RLMT.  (Inter company transferees won’t have to either – effectively because jobs in these categories involve the transfer of a company’s existing employee from one branch to another.  They are not new appointments).  

The Migration Advisory Committee (the “MAC” - a group of 6 economists) advises the government about what constitute shortage occupations.  On Tuesday 9 September their first report was produced.  The list includes meteorologists, geologists, civil and chemical engineers, quantity surveyors project managers, consultant psychiatrists and nurses (within specialist areas of experience), some dental practitioners, maths and science teachers  – as well as skilled ballet dancers, skilled chefs and (in Scotland) “manual filleters of frozen fish” - as occupations which are under represented by domestic labour resources and are therefore needed.

Glaringly absent from the list are midwives, social workers and IT technicians. 

UK care homes traditionally employ large numbers of workers from outside the UK and the EEA.  The shortage occupations list includes “care assistants and home carers” –but it stipulates that anyone applying in this category must have the title of “skilled senior care worker”.  The word “skilled” means that care worker is earning at least £8.80 per hour.

It seems likely that the among the consequences of this announcement will be that care homes in particular will struggle to recruit adequate numbers of staff to look after their residents. 

Reducing the supply of skilled workers from beyond the EEA is explained by the MAC’s chairman Professor David Metcalf as contributing to the need for domestic shortages not to be fixed in the short term by foreign labour – thereby making it apparently unnecessary for the domestic labour force to be “upskilled”.   The view taken by the MAC appears to be that it is in the UK’s economic interests instead to ensure that these skills are available from within the domestic and EEA labour markets.