On 13 October 2026, The Telegraph ran the headline "Migrants taking four in five new jobs". The same claim ran across much of the national press.

Headlines like this tell millions of readers that migrants are pushing British people out of work. The figures behind it show nothing of the kind.

The facts

• The Centre for Social Justice, which produced the report, used HMRC payroll data. Payrolled jobs rose from 28.4 million in 2014 to 32.1 million in 2025, a net increase of about 3.7 million.
• That is a net change, not a count of new hires. Over a decade, millions of jobs start and end as people leave school, retire, change jobs or take on second jobs. The data says nothing about who filled which job.
• Jobs held by British nationals rose by around 734,000. British nationals still hold around 80% of all payrolled jobs; the share held by foreign nationals rose from 11% to 20%.
• Nationality is recorded when someone first registers for National Insurance, so people who later became British citizens are still counted as foreign.

The reach

The Telegraph reaches up to 15.4 million people.

This Fight back draws on a fact-check by Emma Monk of Monk Debunks.

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