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Is immigration actually the problem?
Look beyond the headlines and explore how immigration really affects the UK economy
What does one person pay in, and take out, over a lifetime?
Take someone who moves to the UK at 25 and stays for good. Each year they pay tax, and each year they cost something in public services, benefits and pensions. Add those years up and you get a running total. Above the line, they have paid in more than they have taken out. Below it, they have taken out more.
View these figures as a table
What does this tell us?
On the same pay, someone who moves here starts ahead
A child born in the UK costs around £400,000 in schools, healthcare and family support before they start paying much tax.
Someone who arrives at 25 was raised and educated somewhere else, at no cost to the UK. On average pay, that head start of around £400,000 stays with them for life.
Pay matters far more than where you were born
On average pay, this worker has paid in £435,000 more than they have taken out by the age of 81. On higher pay, it is just over £1 million.
On low pay, they have taken out £617,000 more than they have paid in. That is what low pay does to anyone's sums, wherever they were born.
Everyone costs more in old age
Every line bends downwards in the late sixties, when the state pension starts and health costs rise.
Count a UK-born person on average pay from birth and they are back below zero by 82. The worker who arrived at 25 on the same pay does not drop below zero until 92.
These are worked examples, not real people
Each line is one person who arrives at 25, stays for life and keeps the same place on the pay ladder throughout. Partners and children are not counted.
Real lives are messier. People arrive at different ages, change jobs, raise families and sometimes leave again.
Why does it matter?
Arguments about immigration often come down to one claim: that people who move here take more than they give. The official figures say it depends, mostly on how well their work is paid.
That turns a question about immigration into a question about wages. Low pay leaves the public finances short whether the worker was born in Leeds or Lagos.
About these figures
- Source: Office for Budget Responsibility, Fiscal risks and sustainability, September 2024, Chart 4.13 as corrected on 14 November 2024, and the OBR's note on its method (6 March 2025). The same figures are published by the Migration Observatory. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
- The OBR describes these as “order-of-magnitude estimates” that are “highly uncertain”. They show how much pay, age and length of stay matter. They are not a count of what migration as a whole costs or brings in.
- “Paid in” means all taxes. “Taken out” means public spending on that person: healthcare, benefits, the state pension and a share of other services. Each person is assumed to use public services as much as a typical UK resident of the same age.
- Low paid means about half of UK average earnings, paying 22% of the tax an average UK resident pays. Higher paid means about 30% above average earnings, paying 144%. Each person keeps that position for their whole working life.
- For the migrant worker, the OBR counts no education spending and no benefits in the first five years. It adds £20,000 in the year they arrive for their share of public buildings, roads and equipment, and £12,500 in visa fees and health charges paid.
- “Born here” is the OBR's representative UK resident: someone on average pay at every age. “Counted from 25” starts their total at zero at 25, so both people are measured over the same years.
- The figures use the tax and spending expected in 2028-29 and are added up year by year without further adjustment. Year-by-year amounts are worked out from running totals rounded to the nearest £1,000, so each one may be out by up to £1,000.
- The figures do not put a value on the work itself, such as care work or nursing that public services depend on.
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