UK: labour migration from EU-10 rising but still low 

The report , carried out by NOP and commissioned by Manpower , is based on research of 2,191 businesses in the UK. It puts into perspective fears in some of the EU-15 countries that opening their labour markets might attract a wave of cheap labour from the East. In the UK, the report finds, workers from the EU-8 countries (the eight Central and Eastern European countries which have joined the EU on 1 May 2004) were filling in mainly low-qualified vacancies in big companies. 

The report found that in some sectors, like manufacturing, agriculture and retail, the percentage of companies which have hired workers from the 8 Central-Eastern European countries which joined the EU on 1 May 2004 have more or less doubled. 

Employers who have recruited workers from the EU accession countries by sector        Graphics: Manpower

In one sector - mining - ten times as many companies have hired workers from the East in 2006 as in the year before. Still, at 10 percent, the proportion of companies having employed Eastern workers is still fairly low, if one takes into account that companies in that sector are typically quite big. Generally, big businesses with more employees and a more global reach-out are more likely to fill vacancies with workers from the East than smaller and medium-sized enterprises. 

Size of businesses employing EU workers        Graphics: Manpower

But whereas the number of big companies which have recruited EU-8 workers has only increased by one third, the figure for small enterprises having done so has almost doubled. 

Typically, the number of Eastern workers employed does not exceed ten.

 Number of EU accession workers each business has employed                             Graphics: Manpower 

A small and steady number of businesses, however, is employing a fairly high number of workers from Central and Eastern Europe. 

The figures confirm that companies are increasingly using workers from the East to become more flexible in times of labour shortage, while overall figures remain at a pretty low level. The practice may, however, also have a negative impact on wage levels, because employers can resort to hiring cheaper labour from the East when formerly they had to pay more in order to fill vacancies.