On 4 December 2023, the Home Secretary announced changes to the immigration system related to the Skilled Worker (SW) pathway. Subsequently, on 17 January 2024, the Government asked the Immigration Advisory Committee (MAC) to urgently review the new Immigrant Income List (ISL) and report back by 23 February 2024. This report will be that programme. We hope that a commission will be appointed for the full review of the Immigrant Salary List (ISL) and will ask the Government to consider the points raised in this report before making a commission.

The government announcement on 4 December 2023 (to be implemented from April 2024) includes:

Shortage Occupation List (SOL) to be replaced with the Immigration Salary List (ISL);

Abolishing the 20% ‘going rate’ discount, previously a benefit of placing an occupation on the SOL;

SW route (except Health and Care worker (HandCW) visa):General threshold raised from £26,200 to £38,700.

This is an increase from the 25th to 50th percentile (median) of eligible SW occupations alongside an update to the latest nominal wage data (Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE));

Raising the occupation-specific thresholds from the 25th percentile to the 50th percentile (median) full-time salary of the occupation for non-HandCW occupations or the national pay scale where applicable; and,For occupations on the ISL, a threshold of either £30,960 or their occupation-specific threshold, whichever is higher.

HandCW Visa:An exemption recognising the public value and as stated by the government to “continue to bring the healthcare workers that our care sector and NHS need”;

General threshold of £29,000 rather than £38,700, which continues to be the 25th percentile of salaries uprated to the latest data;

Occupation-specific thresholds set at the 25th percentile or the national pay scale where applicable; and,

For occupations on the ISL, a threshold of either £23,200 or their occupation-specific threshold, whichever is higher.

As requested by the Home Secretary in the commissioning letter, we have considered only those occupations currently on the SOL and those which we recommended for inclusion in our 2023 SOL review. This is intended to be an interim measure for the implementation of the new rules announced on 4 December 2023, ahead of a full review of the ISL starting later in the year. We have recommended 21 occupations be included on the ISL, which represents 8% of job roles eligible for the SW route by employment. Previously, approximately 30% of job roles eligible for the SW route were on the SOL.

Following the change in occupation-specific thresholds (previously referred to as going rates) from the 25th percentile to the median full-time salary (for non-H&CW occupations), we will henceforth refer explicitly to the percentile measure (either 25th or 50th) and will use the term occupation-specific threshold to refer to the 25th percentile for H&CW occupations and the 50th percentile for non-H&CW occupations. We will no longer use the term ‘going rate’ (see Table 1 below for a summary of the changes).