Welcome to Britain - so long as you're an engineer, maths teacher or sheep shearer

Doctors, secondary school teachers and social workers from outside Europe will no longer be recruited to work in Britain under the points-based immigration system which is to come into force in November.

The three are the largest occupations represented among 300,000 skilled jobs currently open to non-European Union migrants which will be excluded under the new system.

The provisional list of shortage occupations published yesterday by the Home Office's migration advisory committee reduces the number of skilled jobs in Britain open to non-EU migrants from 1 million to 700,000. It is thought the changes will cut the level of skilled migration to Britain from outside Europe by between 30,000 and 70,000 people a year.


Graphic from here. Click for bigger.

The main list of shortage areas identified by the group of labour market economists is headed by construction managers involved in multimillion-pound projects, civil and chemical engineers, medical consultants, maths and science teachers, and ships officers to staff a newly growing merchant navy.

It also includes unexpected occupations such as skilled ballet dancers and sheep shearers. The experts heard evidence from the Royal Ballet that very few British applicants had the required level of artistic excellence or aesthestics.

The other exception will enable a group of 500 Australian and New Zealand shearers who travel the world working on up to 400 sheep a day to continue to operate in Britain, where they shear 20% of the UK flock. Manual frozen fish filleters are listed as a skilled shortage occupation in a list for Scotland. The decision is justified by the fact they have to work at minus 20C.