UK migration advisers cut the shortage visa list to 28 jobs, all for 18 months only

On 23 July 2026 the United Kingdom's Migration Advisory Committee published the second and final stage of its review of the Temporary Shortage List, the mechanism that lets employers sponsor workers in jobs below degree level. It recommended 28 occupations for the list. It recommended none of them for the full three year term. Every one was given 18 months only, running from 1 January 2027 to 30 June 2028 on the timetable set out by the immigration firm Fragomen in its note of the same date.

The list exists because of the immigration white paper published on 12 May 2025, which raised the general skills threshold and left a narrow route for occupations in genuine shortage. The Home Secretary commissioned the review on 2 July 2025 and attached a condition: sectors wanting access had to produce Jobs Plans showing how they would train and recruit domestically. Stage 1, published on 9 October 2025 and updated on 25 March 2026, designed the list and shortlisted occupations for closer examination.

The arithmetic in the Stage 2 report is unsparing. Eighty two occupations were in scope. Forty six were covered by Jobs Plans. Twenty eight were recommended. Eighteen were refused outright, among them laboratory technicians, marketing associate professionals, sales accounts and business development managers, aircraft maintenance trades, vehicle technicians and design occupations not elsewhere classified. The recommended occupations employ about 1.3 million people in the UK and account for roughly 4,000 visas a year. All 82 accounted for about 10,000.

The committee's reasoning rests on a labour market that has loosened. The report records 0.4 vacancies per unemployed person in January to March 2026, against a peak ratio of 1.0 in 2022, and unemployment rising from 1.3 million to 1.8 million between 2022 and 2026, with more than half of that increase among people under 25. For office based roles, visa grants amounted to about 0.2 per cent of employment. The general salary threshold is set at £30,900, the 30th percentile of full time earnings in 2025, and listed occupations must pay their own occupational median. No salary discount was recommended.

Construction dominates the outcome and also supplies the report's sharpest warning. The Construction Leadership Council, responding on 23 July 2026, counted 15 construction occupations among the 28, plus one straddling construction and clean energy. The committee itself described construction as a higher risk context for labour exploitation, noted that some construction occupation codes show visa non grant rates above 70 per cent, and observed that the sector's reliance on self employment and subcontracting sits awkwardly with the employer to employee relationship that sponsorship requires. It nonetheless recommended those occupations, saying the evidence was too thin for exploitation risk to be a decisive factor, and promised monitoring of visa use, non grant rates, sponsor behaviour and the job titles used in applications. The Council, for its part, said stronger action on shortages and on the domestic workforce was needed, while the committee complained that construction's own returns lacked clarity on shortage data and regional breakdowns.

How big a cut this is depends on where you start counting. Fragomen frames it as a fall from 52 occupations on the current interim list to 28, with 20 retained and eight added, including data analysts, digital infrastructure roles and engineering and manufacturing technicians. The committee frames it as 28 out of 82 examined. Roles dropped from the list, including business, human resources, legal, advertising, marketing and creative positions, would no longer be sponsorable unless they meet the degree level threshold.

The backdrop is a route already shrinking fast. Home Office statistics published on 16 July 2026 record 253,000 work visas granted in the year ending March 2026, 17 per cent down on the previous year, and 111,000 Skilled Worker visas, 76 per cent below the peak in the year ending December 2023, with care worker visas falling from 108,000 to 1,400. The Work Rights Centre, an advocacy organisation, put the 2025 calendar year figure at 45,797 Skilled Worker visas, the lowest since 2021, counting on a narrower basis than the Home Office series, and reported nursing professionals down 93 per cent from 2022. Its argument is not about volume: sponsored workers are tied to their employers and bargain from weakness, and it opposes proposals to lengthen that tie.

What happens next is not settled. The government has not said whether it accepts the recommendations, and no transitional arrangements have been published for workers already sponsored in occupations facing removal. The monitoring the committee promised has no stated mechanism or trigger. A narrower review is planned when the 18 months expire, with a full review every three years, but whether the Jobs Plans produce trained British workers by mid 2028 is exactly the question nobody can yet answer.