713,000 new foreign workers in UK
The UK issued National Insurance numbers to 713,000 overseas nationals in the year to April 2007.
That number - which includes those who may be in the UK only for a short time - is more than twice the amount issued to non-UK nationals four years earlier.
The figures include self-employed people as well as the employed workers who are counted in other surveys.
The number working in the UK for the first time from new EU counties rose to 321,000 from 277,000 a year earlier.
Nearly a quarter of a million Polish people were given National Insurance number for the first time in 2006/7.
The Department for Work and Pensions figures show 583,000 of all the new National Insurance numbers were for people under the age of 35, with 35,000 more men than women.
National Insurance numbers are needed by anyone of working age who wants to work legally in the UK. The figures do not include dependents such as children.
The figures also do not mean that there are now 713,000 more foreign workers in the UK than a year earlier, as the figures do not count those who leave the UK.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/u ... 913296.stm
