The number of foreign-born migrant workers with UK jobs reached an all time high of 2 million at the end of 2007, accounting for nearly eight per cent of the total UK workforce, according to a UK Labour Force survey.

This figure is a considerable jump from the 864,000 foreign workers who were accounted for in 2001 and is being greatly attributed to opportunities created when eight new countries joined the EU in 2004. The new member States were:

• Cyprus
• Czech Republic
• Estonia
• Hungary
• Latvia
• Lithuania
• Malta
• Poland
• Slovakia
• Slovenia

Migrants from the eight countries account for over 700,000 of the 2 million foreign-born migrant workers on the UK workforce. The 2 million workers account for 7.7 per cent of the total UK workforce of 25.9 million. The number of British born employees declined between 2001 and 2007 by 500,000 from 24.4 million in 2001, to 23.9 million in 2007.