Despite Oldham having the highest UK unemployment growth in the last year, the UK’s fourth lowest number of children living in fully working households and the UK’s fourth highest tax credit payment rate the allure of Oldham to impoverished economic migrants is undiminished. Today’s national Insurance number allocation statistical release for adult foreign citizens living in Oldham showed 5% more registering in the first 6 months of 2018 than registered in the first 6 months of 2017. Romanians made up more than a third of the world total and 58% of all EU economic migrants registering in Oldham in 2018. In connected news today’s asylum figures release showed that Greater Manchester is currently home to over two thirds or 6,910 of the 10,227 adult asylum seekers in the entire North West with Oldham currently housing 796 adults which leaves the four other North West regions Cheshire, Cumbria, Lancashire and Merseyside with less than a third or 3,317 between them.
NINO figures for Oldham Jan to June 2018. Graph provided by the Department for Work and Pensions
Quarterly national insurance number data can be downloaded from the governments Stat-Xplore portal and quarterly asylum data is published on the gov.uk website.
In the last decade the non-Uk born population of Oldham has grown at almost three times the rate of growth seen in Rochdale which had the same number of non-Uk born residents as Oldham a decade ago. Here’s the link to official data