Long-term international migration, provisional - year ending December 2024 - Huge Drop

23rd May 2025

Long-term net migration is down by almost 50%. The number of people immigrating minus the number of people emigrating is provisionally estimated to be 431,000 in year ending (YE) December 2024, compared with 860,000 a year earlier.

This change is driven by a decrease in immigration from non-EU+ nationals, where we are seeing reductions in people arriving on work- and study-related visas, and an increase in emigration over the 18 months to December 2024, especially people leaving who originally came on study visas once pandemic travel restrictions to the UK were eased.

The provisional estimate for total long-term immigration for YE December 2024 is 948,000, a decrease of almost a third from the revised YE December 2023 estimate of 1,326,000 and the first time it has been below 1 million since YE March 2022.

The provisional estimate for total long-term emigration for YE December 2024 is 517,000, an increase of around 11% compared with the previous year (466,000). Emigration is now at a similar level to YE June 2017.

For non-EU+ nationals, there was around a 49% decrease in immigration for work (main applicants) compared with the revised estimate for the previous year-ending period. This was the largest numerical decrease (108,000) of all groups.

The decrease in immigration for study (main applicants) was smaller at around 17%, for the same period.

There was an 86% (105,000) reduction in the number of study dependants, the largest percentage decrease, and a 35% (81,000) decrease in the number of work dependants.

For this release, our methods are largely consistent with the last release published in November 2024. Revisions in this release are because of more complete travel data being available. Long-term net migration estimates for YE December 2023 and YE June 2024 have been revised downwards by 6,000 and upwards by 11,000, respectively.

Read the full ONS report HERE