Four in five jobs created over the past decade have been taken by migrants.

Of the 3.7million new roles recorded under the PAYE system since 2014, just 734,000 were taken by UK nationals, a think-tank has found.

EU citizens accounted for 408,000 jobs, while the vast majority – 2.5million – went to migrants from the rest of the world, the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) said, with most of the surge coming since the pandemic.

The think-tank warned that while employers gained ‘unprecedented access to overseas labour’, taxpayers have been forced to absorb the cost of millions of Britons being ‘written off’ and left on benefits.

As the number of migrant workers soared by 2.1million from 2020, the number of people receiving out-of-work benefits across the UK rose by 2.3million.

Around 6.7million people across England, Wales and Scotland now receive at least one such benefit, with the bill for working-age people set to reach £136billion this year, up by £50billion in real terms since 2019-20.

The findings come just days after Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood admitted she was constantly being lobbied by Labour ministers to let more foreign workers into the country.

The Daily Mail also told how Whitehall departments have spent at least £5million on more than 1,500 visas for migrant staff since the election.

Former Cabinet minister and CSJ founder Sir Iain Duncan Smith said: ‘The report shows that this crisis extends beyond the benefit system.

‘The truth is that successive governments have used welfare over decades to compensate parts of the country for economic failure rather than creating the conditions for prosperity.

‘Compounding this, ministers have repeatedly pulled the easy lever of immigration rather than providing a better deal for left-behind communities. Welfare reform, immigration and regional growth must now be treated as parts of the same challenge.’

The CSJ’s analysis of HMRC figures found the number of pay-as-you-earn (PAYE) workers across Britain – whose pay packets have tax deducted automatically – rose from 28.3million in July 2014 to 32million in December 2025. But of that 3.7million increase, only 733,500 jobs (20 per cent) were taken by UK nationals.

In some regions the number of British workers actually fell, with 53,000 fewer in Scotland and 32,000 fewer in the West Midlands.

Over the same period, the number of migrant workers from outside the EU increased by 465,200 in London alone, with an extra 284,500 in the South East.

More than one in four (29 per cent) of the jobs that went to migrant workers from outside Europe were in health and social work, followed by admin and support services (16 per cent) and accommodation and food services (12 per cent).

The 250-page State of Dependency report, put together over a year, said: ‘The most reckless example of this ‘human quantitative easing’ came after the Covid-19 pandemic when the then-government turbocharged migration with the explicit aim of depressing wages to contain inflation.

‘The number of British nationals on payrolls has fallen in nine of the UK’s 12 regions since 2020, while the number of non-EU nationals on payrolls rose in every single region.’

The report found that high immigration also added to the welfare bill with as much as £16billion a year going to foreign nationals.

Reform UK deputy leader Richard Tice, whose party has vowed to restrict welfare payments to just British citizens if it wins the election, said: ‘This report is a damning indictment of Labour and Conservative governments who have chosen an open-borders, low-wage economic model that writes off millions of our own people.

‘Reform UK will end the welfare trap, halt mass immigration and get British workers back into jobs.’

Shadow Cabinet Office minister Mike Wood said: ‘Labour have sent unemployment up and up with their tax raids on businesses and endless red tape. And their failure to secure our borders means more and more low-skilled migrants are arriving.

Read More: Four out of five new jobs went to foreigners in the past decade, new report reveals