People planning to move to the U.K. for work are not necessarily looking at the jobs you might expect, according to the jobs site Indeed, with senior lecturer positions proving the most popular.
Job advertisements for senior lecturer roles had the highest share of clicks from overseas, with some 37% of views coming from outside the U.K., according to a new survey from the company. These jobs have an average annual advertised salary of £41,979 ($54,708).
Indeed analyzed millions of job postings on its platform, looking at which roles were getting the highest share of clicks from non-U.K. IP addresses.
The second most popular role for overseas applicants was a French teacher, with nearly a third (31%) of clicks on these job postings coming from overseas. This role has an average salary of £30,974, Indeed said.
Software jobs also proved popular, with Android developer and SAP (systems, applications and products) consultant postings each attracting more than a quarter of views from outside Britain.
Despite an average advertised salary of £81,424, however, the role of corporate lawyer ranked fifth place.
Indeed also said that interest in postings started to fall for jobs advertising salaries below £30,000.
10 U.K. jobs with the highest share of clicks from overseas in 2019
- Senior fellow
- French teacher
- Android developer
- SAP consultant
- Corporate lawyer
- Post-doctoral fellow
- Senior Java developer
- Machine learning engineer
- Fellow
- Salesforce developer
The research was released a few days before the British government confirmed plans to lower the salary threshold required for skilled overseas workers who are applying to come to the U.K., from £30,000 to £25,600.
As part of post-Brexit immigration policy plans announced Wednesday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government said it had accepted a recommendation by the Migration Advisory Committee to lower the salary requirements, in a bid to attract skilled workers to lower-paid jobs.
From January 1 2021, following a transition period of the U.K.’s departure from the EU, the government has said Britain will move to a “points-based” immigration system, similar to that used in Australia, where people will be required to have a total of 70 points in order to be eligible to apply for a visa.
Potential applicants would get 10 points for being able to speak English at the “required level,” for instance, and another 20 points for having a job offer from an “approved sponsor.”
Falling immigration
People in India showed the most interest from abroad in U.K. roles, and postings for software engineers got the most clicks from the country, Indeed’s research showed.
Workers in the U.S., meanwhile, were the second most likely to look at British jobs and were most interested in becoming a customer service representative in the U.K.
However, Indeed also found that interest among American tech professionals for similar roles in Britain had fallen in the past two years. The share of searches by U.S.-based tech workers for jobs across the Atlantic fell from 17% in 2017 to 14% in 2019.
Analysis by accountancy firm BDO of the U.K. government’s visa and immigration data, published in November, supported this finding. It showed that the U.K. technology sector had been the hardest hit of any sector by a fall in skilled worker visa applications from non-EU citizens since the EU referendum in 2016.
BDO calculated that the number of non-EU skilled workers applying to enter the U.K. tech sector had fallen by 17%, from 23,700 in 2015/16 to 19,700 in 2018/19.
The number of skilled workers overall applying for jobs in the U.K. has fallen by 9% since Britain voted to leave the EU, BDO said. It showed that Britain had seen around 4,300 fewer applications for skilled worker visas from non-EU citizens since the Brexit vote.
