UK Suffers Brain Drain In 50 Years
22/02/2008
Britain is experiencing the highest human capital flight -" brain drain"- as one in 10 highly skilled professionals settle abroad.
According to the internationally acclaimed research group, Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), more and more Britons are leaving the country to settle overseas, making this the biggest exodus the UK has seen in 50 years.
Britain's migration is higher than any of the OECD's other 30 members. Germany has lost only 860,000 highly skilled workers, America 410,000 and France 370,000.
There are now 3.247 million British-born people living abroad, of whom more than 1.1 million are highly-skilled university graduates, states the research. More than three quarters of UK citizens have settled abroad for more than years.
It appears that no other country is suffering such a high loss at this point; as a matter of fact countries such as Canada , New Zealand and Australia are the ones gaining from these migrants, encouraging them to immigrate to these countries as there is a high demand for skilled migrants.
Doctors, teachers and engineers are amongst the highest emigrating and government spends millions of pounds on graduate placements and further training programme. The cost of training a junior doctor, for example, is £250,000.
A spokesman for the Paris-based OECD said: "British people have lots of opportunities to move and work abroad so very highly-skilled people are travelling around. It is seen by many British people as part of their personal development to have some experience abroad."
The OECD found that 27.3 per cent of those emigrating had health or education qualifications, 37.7 per cent had humanities or social science degrees and 28.5 per cent were scientists or engineers.
Britain has a shortage of graduates in many of these fields and universities have long warned that some of the brightest hopes are being lost to higher salaries abroad.
Although there are a lot of Britons leaving the country, they are being replaced to an extent by highly skilled migrants who take advantage of the Highly Skilled Migrant Programme (HSMP). Indian and Chinese professionals are lured to the UK by the currency exchange and standard of living. If The UK was not receiving the high volume of investors, entrepreneurs, doctors, students coming in the country, they could have a problem, but it is the opposite. The immigration laws continue to change and will make migrating to the UK more difficult pushing migrants to other countries.
The term brain drain was coined in the 1950s following the mass emigration of scientists and other experts to America. Tens of thousands of people also left the country to escape the industrial unrest and high taxes of the 1970s. The Office for National Statistics last year, suggested that 207,000 Britons - one every three minutes - left in 2006 making this the highest in years.
The report however did not outline the reasons why many Britons where choosing life overseas. The next step for government is to try and find ways of encouraging young graduate to stay in the country.
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