You asked:

I am writing to you under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 dated to request the following information.

  • The current number of EU nationals living in Greater Manchester and current number of EU nationals living in the UK overall.

  • The figures for EU workers sorted by the industries they work in (such as the services industry, construction, farming etc) within Greater Manchester.

  • The figures for the above request provided across the following three year periods:

July 2014 to July 2015
July 2015 to July 2016
July 2016 to July 2017

We said:

Thank you for your enquiry about the number of (non-UK) EU nationals living and working in Greater Manchester and the UK.

We publish estimates of population of the UK by country of birth and nationality for calendar years. The nearest available data to your request for (non-UK) EU nationals living in Greater Manchester and the UK would be for the calendar years 2014, 2015 and 2016 (taken from table 2.1, Nationality, from the tables downloadable from the link above), as follows:

These estimates are based on the Annual Population Survey and have confidence intervals (CI) which indicate that we expect the actual figure to be the estimate of persons plus or minus the confidence interval, so for Greater Manchester in 2015 we expect the true number to be in the range 110,000 to 138,000.

The data we have available about non-UK EU nationals working in the UK comes from a paper published earlier this year about international migration and the labour market and from this article we have produced the attached table which gives estimates by sector at regional and UK level. We currently have no data available about your specific request of non-UK EU nationals working in the Greater Manchester area. This could be produced as an ad hoc enquiry but this would attract a charge.

When accessing any of our files please read the 'notes, terms and conditions' contained within them.

If you have any further questions please do not hesitate to contact us on pop.info@ons.gov.uk