Britons squeezed out of workplace by foreigners

Immigrant workers have been squeezing thousands of Britons out of workplace every year. This inference can be drawn from the figures released by the British government.

According to official statistics, in the past five years, the immigrant workforce has grown by almost a million while the number of native-born workers has plummeted by half a million, the 'Daily Mail' reported here today.

The latest bombshell from the Treasury came after a week of chaos over immigration figures, in which ministers had to admit that the impact of mass immigration has been far more dramatic than previously acknowledged.

In fact, the Treasury has published the figures in the annual ONS Labour Force Survey which monitors trends among Britain's workers.

In the 10 years since the Labour party came to power it shows that more than 80 per cent of the new jobs have gone to the foreign workers "" a far higher proportion than Ministers had admitted last week.

Since 1997 the number of adults in work has risen by 1.7 million. The growth of the immigrant workforce accounts for 1.35 million of the new jobs whereas the number of native-born Britons in work rose by just 310,000 "" fewer than one in five.

Over the past five years the picture is far more stark. Since 2002, Britain's workforce has grown by 491,000 to 27.2 million.

Yet the number of those with jobs who were born in Britain fell by almost the same number "" down 478,000, dipping below 24 million. Over the same period the number of foreigners working in Britain soared by 964,000 to nearly 3.3 million "" up 42 per cent, the figures revealed.