UK population to hit 72.5 million by 2032

The UK population is projected to rise to 72.5 million by mid-2032 from 67.6 million in mid-2022, driven almost entirely by net migration, the Office for National Statistics said on Tuesday.

Britain has seen record levels of immigration in recent years, and the ONS projections may fuel a debate over the ability of strained public services to cope with population growth and the need for foreign workers to drive the economy.

Successive administrations including Prime Minister Keir Starmer's Labour government have vowed to reduce immigration – a hot political topic that helped lead to the Brexit vote in 2016 and has fuelled the rise of the right-wing Reform UK party.

Net migration - the number of people arriving minus those leaving - of 4.9 million people is projected to account for the population increase over the 10-year period, the ONS said.

The population projections will be welcome news for finance minister Rachel Reeves as they should boost the forecast size of the UK economy, resulting in lower government borrowing, the Resolution Foundation think tank said.

"A larger working-age population means a bigger economy, more workers, and higher tax receipts, which should deliver a fiscal boost of around 5 billion pounds a year by the end of the decade," Adam Corlett, principal economist at the foundation, said in a statement.

The number of births and deaths in the UK over 2022-2032 is projected to be similar, the ONS added. Although births were projected to increase slightly, deaths are also expected to go up as the large numbers of people born in the two decades after 1945 get older.

The projections also assume a long-term net migration level of 340,000 per year from the year ending mid-2028 onwards, the ONS said. Net migration reached a record of more than 900,000 in the year to June 2023.

ONS data showed last year that the UK's population had grown by 1% in annual terms to 68.3 million as of mid-2023, mainly due to immigration. While post-Brexit changes to visas fuelled a sharp drop in the number of European Union migrants to Britain, new visa rules led to a surge in immigration from India, Nigeria and Pakistan, often to fill health and social care vacancies.