MOSCOW (Sputnik) – "There were 413,000 EU2 citizens living in the UK in 2016 according to the population by country of birth and nationality estimates, based on one year of data from the Annual Population Survey (APS)," the UK Office for National Statistics said in a report released on Wednesday.
In other words, a total of 413,000 nationals from Bulgaria and Romania, collectively referred to as EU2, had moved to the United Kingdom as of 2016.
The UK statistics office also found that most of the EU2 nationals were between 16 and 49 years old.
"The majority of Bulgarian and Romanian citizens living in the UK were estimated to be aged between 16 and 49 years (81% and 77% respectively)," the report added.
Around 79 percent of the EU2 nationals, who live in the United Kingdom, were employed, while only 4 percent were registered as unemployed, and the remaining 17 percent were out of the workplace due to studying or opting for economic inactivity. The Bulgarians and Romanians most frequently found employment in distribution, hotel, construction or restaurant industry, the report said.
According to the national statistics office's 2015 report, concerning the UK population by country of birth and nationality, there were 234,000 EU2 nationals in the country in 2014.
The citizens of Romania and Bulgaria, the countries that joined the European Union in 2007, received the legal right to work in the United Kingdom in 2014, after a seven-year ban on UK employment for these nationals. Since then, London regularly marks a steady rise in the number of the EU2 citizens arriving to stay in the United Kingdom.
