The UK's future relationship with the European Union (EU) remains undecided. Brexit-related uncertainty has led to investment plans being deferred and increased stockbuilding.

Under our main-case forecast, based on a ‘soft’ Brexit and continuing uncertainty, GDP growth continues at around 1½ per cent in 2019 and 2020, broadly in line with potential output growth, and the unemployment rate stays at around 4 per cent.

CPI inflation is forecast to remain around 2 per cent per annum as faster unit labour cost growth is offset by slower import price inflation. With inflation stable at target, and only limited evidence of domestic inflationary pressure, Bank Rate remains at 0.75 per cent throughout this year before being raised to 1 per cent in the second half of 2020.

We expect public spending to rise more quickly than currently planned. That, together with the forthcoming reclassification of student loans in the public finances, is likely to mean that the government's medium-term fiscal objectives will not be met.

The current account deficit is forecast to fall from 4.2 per cent of GDP in 2019 to around 3 per cent in 2020, as domestic saving picks up relative to investment.

Recent data indicates that the global output growth cycle has peaked. We expect global GDP growth to continue, but at a slightly slower pace than in the past two years.

Tariff increases and trade disputes have contributed to slowing growth and have added uncertainty to the global economic outlook.

While slightly faster wage growth in advanced economies and tighter labour markets raise the potential for higher inflation, the fall in oil prices in late 2018 should, with slowing output growth, prevent a widespread pick-up in inflation.

Continued low inflation opens the possibility for central banks to increase monetary accommodation to support economic activity should it be required.

Despite slower output growth this year, this decade will have seen sustained global GDP growth averaging 3.8 per cent a year.

As Britain prepares to leave the EU immigration policy has come to the top of the policy agenda. The Brexit vote was seen as a vote against free movement and new policies are aimed at introducing more restrictive controls. The report by the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) in September 2018 recommended little new provision for low-skilled migration post-Brexit (MAC, 2018). This was then adopted by the Home Office in its Immigration White Paper, published in November 2018 (Home Affairs Committee, 2018). The White Paper explicitly references public concerns that migrant labour reduces opportunities for British workers and undermines their pay and conditions. Yet employers have argued that they need to be able to continue to recruit lower, as well as highly skilled labour because the supply of British workers is insufficient. The paper explores the likely impact of proposed restrictions on immigration post-Brexit, using data from NIESR studies of employers and of the general public. It combines an assessment of what is needed to meet the needs of employers, the economy and to address public concerns, finding that there is more consensus than there is often considered to be.

In an era of free movement UK employers have had ready access to a supply of labour from the European Union to fill low-skilled jobs. This has enabled them to adopt business models, operating within broader supply chains, that take advantage of this source of labour and the flexibility that many migrant workers – especially those who are new arrivals to the UK – are prepared to offer them. Drawing mainly on evidence from employers on the role of migrant workers in selected sectors with a substantial proportion of low-skilled jobs, this article explores the challenges and opportunities they face in transitioning to a new post-Brexit immigration regime.

This paper examines the implications of labour migration models that rely on employer sponsorship. According to UK government proposals, long-term migration into high-skilled jobs after Brexit will require workers to be sponsored by employers, while workers in low-skilled and low-wage jobs will receive short-term work permits that do not require an employer sponsor. The paper argues that choosing employer sponsorship over worker-driven routes has three key effects: it gives the government greater ability to regulate which jobs migrants fill; it gives employers more power over their workforce; and it increases the administrative burden associated with hiring workers from overseas. This implies that in high-skilled jobs, employer sponsorship is likely to improve the skill composition of labour migrants but reduce the total number of skilled workers admitted; and that in low-skilled positions the government faces a trade-off between the ability to channel workers to specific jobs (including those where employers struggle to attract workers) and the risk of increasing underpayment or exploitation.

Free movement has been at the heart of the Brexit debate, with the government grappling between satisfying public and business demands for restrictive and liberal approaches to immigration respectively. In response the government have advocated temporary migration as a potential solution, including an expanded UK-EU Youth Mobility Scheme (YMS) modelled on the current T5 YMS on the assumption that YMS migrants undertake low-skilled jobs. Little is known about this visa or the labour market activity of YMS migrants. Drawing on policy analysis alongside survey and interview data from Australian YMS migrants, this paper seeks to bridge some of these knowledge gaps, arguing that an expanded EU YMS will not attract significant EU migrants, and is far from a remedy for free movement ending.

A new skills-based immigration system, with a preference for the highly-skilled, is central to UK policy debates in the Brexit context, arguably responding to majority public opinion on migration. Through qualitative fieldwork with British, Polish and Romanian citizens living in two local authorities in England, this paper shows what participants understand by ‘low-skilled’ and how there is broad support of those who ‘contribute’, but are ‘controlled’ at the same time. Migrants’ narratives of downskilling also illustrate why the category of ‘low-skilled’ migration needs to be seen through a more critical lens in research and policymaking.