UK: Tech firms hiring foreign talent will have to pay more

To curb immigration and encourage employers to invest in Britain’s existing workforce, the home office has announced that tech firms hiring foreign-born software engineers will have to pay £51,000 a year, The Times reports.

The new pay rate threshold is 37 per cent higher than the previous one and will come into effect from April 4.

Similar wage hikes have been announced across dozens of occupations that will require employers to sponsor such workers under the skilled worker visa system.

This is also to bring down immigration from non-EU countries since Brexit, when the government loosened the rules to help employers replace workers from the EU who returned home, the daily said.

About a fifth of the UK labour market — 6.2 million workers — was born overseas, the daily said quoting figures from Oxford University’s Migration Observatory.

Last year 337,240 worker visas were granted, almost two and a half times more than 2019.

Under the new wage terms, employers will have to either terminate the employment for foreign-born workers or grant a steep hike. Some are considering hiring foreign students already in the UK on study visas.

Most tech firms offer skilled foreign engineers a combination of salary and equity, but the new visa rules do not take the value of shares into account.

The Home Office has also reduced the number of low-paying jobs on the shortage occupation list, where employers can pay less than £38,700 a year.