To ask the Minister of State, Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform what his Department's latest estimate is of the number of (a) UK nationals employed in other EU member states and (b) citizens of other EU member states employed in the UK under the terms of the EU Posted Workers Directive.

holding answer 9 February 2009

The latest figures on the number of EU workers who are employed under the terms of the Posted Workers are for 2006 and are not complete. They do not include postings from Spain to the UK, but the number of postings from the UK to all other EU countries includes postings from the UK to Spain. In addition, because these are the 2006 figures, which is before Bulgaria and Romania joined the EU, there is no information for these countries.

Based on this incomplete information, there are more UK workers posted under the posted workers directive—around 47,000 than other EU nationals posted to the UK—around 37,000.

We also have other estimates on the numbers of people working in other countries from the OECD and Eurostat.

The latest data from Eurostat shows that in 2007, around 3.4 per cent. of total UK employment was accounted for by nationals from the other EU-27 countries including 1.8 per cent. from the other EU-15 countries. This equates to just under 1 million EU-27 (excluding the UK) nationals and around 527,000 EU-15 (excluding the UK) nationals working in the UK.

We do not have the 2007 data for the number of UK workers employed in the EU. However, according to the OECD analysis of the 2000 round of censuses, which are the latest figures available, around 581,000 UK born live in the EU-15 (excluding the UK), of which around 324,000 are employed. Total employment in the EU-15 (excluding the UK) was around 131 million, therefore around 0.2 per cent. of total EU-15 (excluding the UK) employment was accounted for by UK workers.

The 2000 OECD work also showed that around 1.2 million EU-15 (excluding the UK) nationals live in the UK, of which around 602,000 are employed. Total employment in the UK was around 27 million, therefore around 2.3 per cent. of total UK employment was accounted for by nationals from the other EU-15 countries. According to the Labour Force Survey (LFS) for 2000—which is on a slightly different basis⁽¹⁾—there were around 470,000 EU-15 (excluding the UK) nationals, 1.7 per cent. of the total.

Since the OECD only reports data for its members and these do not include all of the EU member states, statistics for the EU-27 are unavailable.

^{(1 )}The LFS is a based on a sample, whereas the OECD is a census, in addition, the OECD defined its data according to foreign born, while the LFS data presented are defined by nationality.