The British government recently announced its plans to push for a overhaul of visa and immigration laws in an effort to cut net migration. The sweeping visa law changes followed soon after UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s stern X post: “The Tories ran an immigration system that relied on cheap foreign labour instead of investing in British workers. That betrayal ends now.”
In April, the BBC quoted data presented by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), indicating that the number of jobs on offer slumped to 781,000 in the first three months of 2025. Payroll numbers also witnessed a steep fall. The demand for working staff has weakened as employment costs continue to rise. Moreover, the report established that job vacancies had hit an all-time low in nearly four years.
The Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) and KPMG also noted how the demand for staff slipped in April. A research among 400 recruitment agencies showed that job losses and the slowed-down recruitment process had resulted in number of candidates for advertised jobs increasing dramatically, according to London-based Minutehack.com.
Viral post dives into uncertain UK job market
With those figures in mind, a netizen took to the social media platform X to share a glimpse of the UK job market’s current situation. “I have tons of people text me about coming to the UK for masters, I will tell you to not come, 90% of my batch had to go back because there are no jobs, unless you have money to throw, don’t consider it.”
Viraj Sheth, co-founder and CEO at Monk Entertainment (Monk-E)–also featured on Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia, replied to user Janhavi Jain’s tweet, saying, “Who was ever getting jobs after masters in the UK though? It’s always been a place for rich kids to have a good time at.” She subsequently replied, “60-70% of people got jobs within 6-12 months. It was never this bad.”
Another user popped the question whether the job market block varied for professional fields. “Depends on the field right? Medicine an financial industry is booming,” they wrote, to which, user @janwhyy admitted that even though she didn’t know any people from the medicine field, “finance is not getting jobs either.”
Others also pitched in their views, as someone else commented how different it was in present-day to pursue a master’s degree in the EU or even build a life there. “Rising living costs, limited job opportunities, and tough competition present more challenges than before. There was once a time when moving to the UK felt like a step towards a brighter future. Many of my friends from the EU and UK are facing difficulties, and some have even returned to India,” they wrote. “Some are just getting by, grateful for the better support system than they might have in India. I notice that many of my female friends are hesitant to return, which makes a lot of sense!”
S Lalitha, who’s currently a journalist at The New Indian Express, shared her personal experience: “Second that completely. The only work I managed to get after completing my PG (that too on a scholarship) was door to door fundraising and dropping leaflets! Did it for over a year just to survive and returned after the visa expired.”
Yet another user claimed to have seen many Indians “working in coffee shops and eateries after completing the degrees “(they can stay and work in the UK for 2 years without a sponsored visa) and then go back to India.”
In a follow-up post, Janhavi Jain addressed someone pointing out that it may be easy for her to discuss such a topic, given her own employed status. Detailing how it all worked out for her in the end, and she became part of the lucky exception, she wrote, “I worked my ass off, I was looking for freelance work as soon as I got my offer, so I had part-time marketing opportunity even before landing here, having local experience always works, I organised an event third day of me landing here, I had online following that made people talk to me and helped me network, I made connections and I had around 3 years of experience and it’s harder for freshers, so it worked out in my favor. It didn’t work out for majority of people.”
New visa policy revisions, new fears
With tougher visa policies in place following the May 11 UK immigration crackdown plan revelation, PM Starmer hopes to cut down the rate of mass immigration. As a result, overseas recruitment of care workers will be blocked, and UK businesses will redirect their focus to hiring local British workers.
“Care companies should be recruiting from those workers. They can also extend existing visas. They could recruit as well from people who are on other visas, who are already here. But we do think it’s time to end that care worker recruitment from abroad,” British Interior Minister Yvette Cooper told BBC. “For years we have had a system that encourages businesses to bring in lower-paid workers, rather than invest in our young people.”
The new changes will raise the education threshold for Skilled Worker Visas to the graduate level. As per the current system, foreign workers become eligible for settlement by default after five years of legal residence. The new policy changes assert that people will have to live in the UK for 10 years before qualifying for settlement and citizenship.