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If there is one topic that has consistently dominated airwaves, podcasts and headlines this year, it is immigration. However, the data suggests there is another emerging story that we – journalists, the public, and politicians alike – have not been paying enough attention to: Britain’s population decline.
The UK birth rate is falling to record lows, while the number of people, particularly young people, leaving the country is going up. So, what’s coming up in today’s newsletter:
As I’ve argued repeatedly over the last 18 months, the fall in the number of young people having children, and the drop in the number of children thatyoung people do have when they decide to, ought to be one of the biggest stories of our era.
Why? Put simply, if these trends continue, immigration may be less of a problem and more of a necessity to keep our country going. Why? Because there could be fewer working-age adults for key jobs and paying taxes in the future. Indeed, in certain industries, you might argue we’re already seeing the consequences of this play out.
More on that later. First, let’s unpack the statistics.
It is true that large numbers of people have migrated to the UK in recent years. However, the figures have started to come down.
According to Oxford University’s Migration Observatory, net migration to the UK was 204,000 in the year ending June 2025. That is still high. It’s similar to levels seen during the 2010s. But it’s also a sharp decline from the unusually high numbers of people arriving in Britain seen post-pandemic in 2022 and 2023.
Between June 2024 and June 2025, the Observatory reports that the vast majority – 69 per cent – of non-EU immigration was for work and study purposes.
This tells us that, following calls for reduced migration, the Tories’ tightening of rules may have worked. Labour’s new Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, has more planned to reduce overall immigration numbers. She wants to increase the language and skills requirements for people entering the UK and lengthen the period of time before migrants can access benefits and social housing.
Earlier this year, it was also announced that overseas students will have to “get a graduate job or go home” within two years, and the number of care worker visas was drastically reduced.
If these policies work as intended, immigration could become less of a problem. And, if that happens, will we finally turn our attention to the fact that the number of young Brits leaving the country is only going in one direction? And, that is: up.
It’s worth noting, as Oxford’s Migration Observatory does, that data on emigration is patchy because the way it is collected has recently changed. Nonetheless, as the Office for National Statistics (ONS) reports, the total figure for the number of people who emigrated from the UK between June 2024 and June 2025 is 693,000.
That is an increase of 43,000 on previously estimated figures. Most of the people – 286,000 – who left the UK during that period were non-EU nationals, and around half of them originally arrived on study-related visas.
The number of British nationals within that total figure who left the UK was 252,000. That means that the number of Brits leaving is similar to the number of non-EU nationals.
We don’t know a huge amount about why British citizens leave the UK, but it is generally thought to be for career and lifestyle reasons. You, like me, have surely seen the countless TikTok videos about young people who have moved to “tax-free, crime-free Dubai” or opted to go and live on a beach in Bali.
And we do know that roughly 70 per cent of British emigrants between 2024 and 2025 were young: aged between 16 and 34.
In the background, Brits are also having fewer children. As I reported at the start of the autumn, this summer, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) reported that the UK’s birth rate had fallen to a new record low for the third year in a row.
In 2024, the total fertility rate was 1.41 children per woman, which is the lowest it has been since the late 1970s. Britain is not alone in this downward trend; it’s also the case in the US, France, Italy, South Korea, Taiwan and other rich countries.
As Former Bank of England economist Dame Kate Barker recently told me, there could be many reasons why young Brits are having fewer kids. Chief among them could be expensive housing, the fact that more people go to university and start conventional adulthood later, and other lifestyle factors such as concerns about climate change and the cost of living.
Britain may not be the only country facing this problem, but however you slice it, we have a falling population. It matters that the rate is falling because women need to have 2.1 children each on average to maintain what’s known as “the replacement rate” to maintain a stable global population.
There are fewer children going to Britain’s schools, as the Education Policy Institute (EPI) has warned.
Since 2019, there has been a drop of 150,000 pupils, according to analysis by the EPI, which predicted a further 400,000 decrease in schools in England by the end of the decade.
As I’ve reported, London is particularly hard hit – perhaps because so few young people can afford to live in the capital now – and it has even resulted in schools closing.
Policies to control immigration have been effective. We know this because care homes and nurseries have reported that they face serious problems when trying to recruit new staff. The fact that David Lammy, the Justice Secretary and Deputy Prime Minister, has stepped in to lengthen visas for West African prison officers – who, I am told by insiders, largely keep British prisons running – also tells you this.
Britain has changed. And yet it feels like our politicians haven’t noticed? Much like the housing crisis, which worsened and worsened over time while the UK argued about Brexit, the fact that young people aren’t having children and, if the data is correct, seem to be trying to leave in ever larger numbers, is barely being remarked upon.
This country is getting older. The median age in our population is now 40.6 years old. That’s up from 37.9 in the early 2000s.
The policy implications are enormous. Adult social care is already a major burden on the state, but that will increase. And, if we continue in this direction, there may be fewer young people around to pay for that care via their taxes.
This Labour Government has rightly identified that British people are fed up. They’ve chosen to fight Reform UK on immigration in the hope that their party does not meet the same fate as the Conservatives: electoral decimation and being torn apart internally.
However, Labour’s rhetoric and reality are increasingly diverging. Shabana Mahmood recently said thta becoming a British citizen is “not a right but a privilege”. The problem is that young Brits, increasingly, don’t seem to feel that being here is a privilege at all, and, in years to come, unless trends reverse, there may not be enough of them.
As my colleagues over on The i Paper’s money desk have noted, the number of mortgage borrowers taking out ultra-long loans of more than 35 years has more than tripled since 2020.
This is according to Compare the Market Analysis of Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) data, which shows that 116,276 mortgages were sold last year where the term was 36 years or more.
This is up from 90,911 in 2023, and 36,036 in 2020.
As I reported a few years ago when this trend emerged, the average length of a mortgage term has been steadily rising from 25, to 30 and now to 30-plus years.
The average age of a first-time buyer in Britain is 34 years old. So, if the average first-time homeowner has a 36-year mortgage, they will still be repaying it in their early seventies unless their circumstances change dramatically.
Lengthening mortgage terms is one way that lenders fix what’s known as “affordability” – because house prices are so high and interest rates have returned to higher levels, giving people more time to repay loans is an option for pushing mortgage approvals through.
In theory, that sounds fine, doesn’t it? But, in practice, what it means is that younger people who take on more debt, for longer, will pay more interest over time. Be in no doubt, this is an expensive fix for those borrowers who, if the state’s retirement age stays at 67/68 years old for a while, could still be paying mortgages long after they’ve finished work.
