Britain's population fell by 1.3 million people in 2020 - its sharpest decline since World War II - according to a study published by the Economic Statistics Center of Excellence.
The authors evoke an
"unprecedented exodus"
of foreign workers, linked to the Covid-19 pandemic.
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Their calculations challenge the official figures of the Office for National Statistics, which could not identify this phenomenon of the return of immigrants to their country of origin, for lack of reliable indicators during periods of restricted mobility.
They are based on employment figures, noting a paradoxical rise of nearly 10% of employees of British nationality, at the height of the crisis.
Conversely, they note a decline of more than half a million foreign workers over the year.
It appears that most of the burden of job losses during the pandemic fell on non-UK workers.
Michael O'Connor and Jonathan Portes
On examination of these data, it seems that European immigrants in Great Britain, overrepresented in the service sectors, particularly hotels and restaurants or leisure,
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