ImmigrationNational 20h 42m left
Should employers be required to advertise jobs to British nationals for 28 days before recruiting overseas?
UK employers sponsoring Skilled Worker visas must prove a genuine vacancy but face no legal requirement to advertise to British residents for any period before hiring overseas workers. The former Resident Labour Market Test, which required 28 days of advertising, was abolished in 2020. As of 2026, net migration controls and skills strategies continue to reduce reliance on international recruitment without reimposing advertising rules.
6 Opinions
Stop handing out Skilled Worker visas like free candy. Set an upper limit on issued visas that sponsors bid on; it won’t end the abuse, but at least it would be revenue generating. It would also result in the free market determining the real value of those jobs that need overseas recruitment.
No, we should just add punitive fees on these visas, so its always massively more expensive to take a skilled worker visa then recruit locally. I mean a 3x market rate level penalty, so the only people using this genuinely cant recruit at any cost.
Yes, but with caveats that exemptions can be applied for. e.g, if there was a shortage of nurses and the necessity to train up new nurses meant the shortage would persist, an employer can widen the net immediately. This could be established within the framework of a proper points based immigration system.
No, just advertising will not solve the problem. Ideally we should to close supply of cheap, foreign labour. Immigration, foreign companies active in UK etc. should be eliminated. Make UK attractive to invest money here rather than delegate some tasks overseas.
Scrapping the resident labour market test was an open invitation for bad employers to bypass local workers and dodge investing in training. Requiring companies to advertise domestically for four weeks is basic common sense. It forces businesses to offer fair wages and train domestic talent rather than taking the easy way out with tied visas.