Shadowing Practice: The End Game of U.K Economics - Learn English Speaking with Video
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256 sentences
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In the last decade, the UK's population has risen at its fastest pace since the 1960s.
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And no, it's not because the Brits are suddenly getting broody.
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Fertility is actually falling.
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It's because immigration has surged to record highs.
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Which is funny, only 10 years ago, millions of Brits voted for Brexit specifically to reduce immigration.
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So then why has the exact opposite happened?
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The obvious explanation is that Britain has an aging population and persistent labor shortages.
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Employers need workers, so the government made it easier to bring them in.
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But these labour gaps deserve questioning, because paradoxically, the UK has a staggering 1 million young people who aren't in work, education or training.
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This sounds less like a labour shortage and more like a broken system, where the economy is failing to allocate spare labour capacity into the sectors that demand them.
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But the migration conundrum gets even stranger, because while workers are coming in, there's a growing population of wealthy entrepreneurs who for a host of reasons are leaving.
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And this comes with its own set of potentially crippling problems.
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Immigration debates tend to be emotionally charged and focus on national identity, cultural integration and fairness.
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The cold hard economics tends to get sidelined.
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So, as always, we have some questions to answer.
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If Brexit was meant to reduce immigration, why has it rapidly increased instead?
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Is the UK reliant on immigration as a quick and cheap solution to deeper problems with skills, wages and productivity?
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And finally, how economically damaging is the emigration of wealthy British nationals?
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The UK has long been a financial hub.
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Birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, it was there where investment truly returned at an exponential rate.
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Fortunately, finance has become more accessible since those days.
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But finding the time to properly allocate and manage your hard-earned wealth remains difficult when we have such busy lives.
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That's where Trading212 comes in.
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Trading212 is making it far easier to invest and automate building wealth for regular folk.
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Its app offers investment tools that are pretty impressive.
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For example, with automatic asset allocation, you can diversify your risk with ease and automatically reinvest dividends.
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With a few taps, you can set up automatic investing using a direct debit
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so a portion of your monthly income gets invested in a systematic, calculated manner.
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And if different rates of returns unbalance your portfolio, trading 212 can rebalance it for you.
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This is a feature previously only available for high net worth individuals at investment banks.
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Trading 212 also offers brokerage accounts with competitive interest rates.
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So save time and optimize your portfolio all in one place with Trading 212.
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Just know when investing, your capital is at risk.
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This is not investment advice or portfolio management.
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And since the folk over there love us so much, they're offering us all a random free fractional share worth up to 100 euros.
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Just use the promo code EE after signing up and depositing on the platform the platform.
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UK population growth has accelerated.
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From 1971 to 2000, the average annual growth rate stood at 0.18%, but from 2001 to the present day, it averaged 0.66%.
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This has recently caught headlines following back-to-back years of over 1% growth, representing the highest level of population increase since the late 1940s.
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The difference is that this time it wasn't because of a baby boom.
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It has been driven almost exclusively by net migration.
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That is, the total number of long-term arrivals minus the number of long-term departures.
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Since the Brexit referendum in 2016, when swathes of British people voted to leave on the premise of reducing immigration, net immigration has totaled over 3 million people.
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So, did Brexit somehow open the borders by accident?
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Not exactly.
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What really happened was that in 2021, a single points-based system was introduced to judge EU and non-EU citizens by the same criteria for the first time.
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On its own, that's not obviously a recipe for more migration.
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For EU citizens it was actually way harder to move to the UK, since they were no longer allowed to move to the UK visa-free, and it showed in the data.
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Since the Brexit referendum, EU immigration to the UK has consistently declined, and from 2022 there has been more EU citizens leaving the UK than have been entering.
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But EU citizens were the exception.
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The new points based system allowed the UK government to have more control over their own migration policy.
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With this, they relaxed the rules and opened new migration pathways, which made it easier for non-EU citizens to migrate.
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Now, you're probably wondering, why did they relax the rules and open new pathways?
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Well, we can answer this by honing in on three types of migration.
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Educational migration, labour migration and humanitarian migration.
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In the UK education sector and for UK labour markets, immigration was good for business business.
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In 2021-22, the UK economy was in a rough patch, recovering from the pandemic and facing the highest levels of inflation since the 1970s.
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Incentives existed to increase immigration.
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In higher education, UK universities dramatically expanded their sponsorship of student visas.
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International demand for British universities is strong, making higher education one of the UK's largest exports.
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But in 2021, British universities were under severe financial pressure due to cost inflation.
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Cost inflation that they could not pass on to domestic students
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because there was price cap on tuition fees set at £9,250 a year.
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But here's the catch, this price cap does not exist for international students.
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Given the strong international demand, they are charged far more and are a lucrative revenue source for the sector.
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So when cost inflation puts the sector under increased financial pressure, expanding international recruitment becomes the obvious solution.
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And with the post-Brexit study visas allowing two years of work in the UK post-graduation, the UK government made the offer even more attractive for families around the world who could afford the high fees.
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At the peak in 2022, 484,000 international students migrated to the UK.
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That's an 80% increase compared to 2019, just before the post-Brexit immigration system had been implemented.
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So incentives in the UK higher education sector explain a large chunk of the increase in UK immigration.
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But what else?
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Well, in many UK labour markets, there were severe shortages.
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In particular, the health and care sector was in a bad spot.
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Britain's ageing population was already increasing demand for healthcare and social care workers.
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COVID then added treatment backlogs, long-term sickness and severe pressure on existing staff, widening shortages.
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The government responded again by relaxing health and care visa rules.
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Care workers became eligible for the visa in 2022 for the first time.
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The number of health and care visas granted nearly tripled in a year from 47,000 to 146,000 by 2023.
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Labor shortages grew in other key sectors too.
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In construction, there were 38,000 vacancies a month.
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Wholesale and retail job adverts were 74% above pre-pandemic levels.
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And in farming, the labor shortage was acute enough
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that over 60 million pounds worth of fruit and veg rotted in the fields.
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In total, vacancies across the economy hit record highs in 2022.
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Naturally, this led to more work visas being issued across the economy.
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But direct work visas only partly explain the increase in immigration.
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For many routes, it was possible for workers and students to bring their dependents like children or spouses.
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This contributed significantly to the overall figures.
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For example, there were actually more dependent visas issued to health and care workers than there were main applicants in 2023.
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Dependent visas were also granted for many students too.
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On the whole, student and work-related visas and their dependents accounted for 70% of total immigration during this time.
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But relaxing immigration rules wasn't all about economics.
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humanitarian causes also arose.
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Beijing's political crackdown in Hong Kong, a former British territory, the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, and of course Russia's invasion of Ukraine all created refugees fleeing persecution or war.
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The UK government created pathways to help these people on a moral basis.
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They were exceptional responses to exceptional events.
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Lastly, there was a sharp increase in asylum seekers and irregular migration via small boat crossings of the English Channel from France.
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Despite occupying a large portion of the political debate, this type of immigration only makes up around 15% of total immigration.
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All these factors combined resulted in the highest level of UK net migration ever recorded in 2023, at 944,000.
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In total, 19% of the UK population is foreign-born, which, despite recent influxes, is actually a fairly average level when compared against other OECD countries.
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So no, Brexit didn't cause increased immigration in the UK.
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Brexit gave the UK government control of its own immigration policy, which it used to relax rules to address the financial strain of UK universities, emerging labour shortages and humanitarian crises.
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But this leaves us with a deeper question, because we now know that labour shortages led to more immigration.
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But why do these labour shortages exist in the first place?
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The word shortage makes it sound like Britain simply ran out of workers.
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Like one day the economy opened the cupboard, found nothing inside, and had to rush to order more labour on next day delivery.
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That's obviously an oversimplification.
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Britain has labour shortages, yes, But it also has millions of working age people outside the labour force
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and a growing number of young people not in employment, education or training.
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So, is immigration filling unavoidable shortages?
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Or is it a short-term fix that allows Britain to avoid fixing deeper allocative problems regarding skills, wages and productivity?
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First, let's make one thing clear.
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Immigration has brought real economic benefits to the UK economy.
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Immigrants increase the size of the labour force, reducing the dependency ratio.
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The dependency ratio measures how many people aren't working for every person who is working.
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It's roughly calculated by adding the total population of children and retirees, then dividing it by the working age population.
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The lower the value is, the more taxpayers there are to fund pensions, healthcare and other public services, which eases fiscal pressure.
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Since most immigrants are of working age, the UK's Office for Budget Responsibility, OBR, found that the average migrant is a net fiscal contributor to the UK economy,
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paying more tax than they cost through public services.
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This is why studies show that higher net migration actually leads to marginally less government borrowing and therefore lower national debt.
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Migration also increases consumption, and many high-skill entrepreneurs come specifically to the UK to access finance, higher talent and invest.
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As mentioned, international students support a large higher education sector and they increase labour market flexibility by filling in shortages.
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This all boosts GDP, but the overall impact is slightly blurrier.
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Because while immigration has increased UK GDP, studies show it doesn't seem to have increased the GDP per capita.
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Increased demand for housing, a sector with relatively inelastic supply, has helped to push up prices, especially in the rental market.
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Good for landlords, not so good for renters.
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And there is some evidence that low-skill migration reduces the incentive to invest in machinery and automation, negatively affecting productivity growth.
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Clearly it's a messy picture which requires nuance.
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But one of the areas where high immigration may be contributing to a growing issue in the UK is skills development.
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I say this because it's a massive problem in the UK right now.
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There are 1 million people between the ages of 16 and 24 who are not in education, employment or training, otherwise known as NEETs.
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This represents 12.8% of all people in this age group, which is a higher proportion than any country in the European Union except Romania.
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Clearly Britain has jobs that need doing and people who need opportunities, but the two are not connecting very well.
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And no, the point here isn't that immigrants are taking British jobs.
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that in a free labor market, businesses will hire who is best qualified, experienced and willing for the job.
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Which is fair enough.
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And workers from lower income economies are incentivized to migrate for a higher salary.
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This plentiful supply of experienced labor makes international recruitment easy and much quicker compared to large-scale domestic workforce planning.
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The result is that domestic spare capacity doesn't get developed and deployed.
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Not only does this lead to a lost generation of disillusioned youth, but it also leaves key sectors of the economy reliant on international labor.
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And reliance on international labor can be a problem because they are more likely to leave in a downturn or shock, as seen following Brexit and then again during the pandemic.
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It increases the vulnerability of key sectors, like healthcare for instance.
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As global demand for healthcare workers increases due to global economic growth and aging populations, international labor are coming across increasingly attractive alternatives that may pull them away from the UK.
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Workforce reliance on immigration is no secret.
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The UK's National Health Service, the country's largest single employer, itself acknowledges it is overly dependent on international migration to meet the country's demand for healthcare.
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Just look at this graph.
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The yellow line shows the proportion of vacancies in the UK that are due to skills shortages, and the blue line shows the number of work visas approved.
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When skills-based vacancies go up, more work visas are granted to fill the roles in the immediate year or two after.
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There's a strong lagging relationship.
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This helps maintain supply of key services in the short term, but it negates the long-term need to train, upskill, or reskill spare labour capacity in the workforce.
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It's like using painkillers to treat a medical condition.
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Paracetamol is great at stopping the immediate pain, but in the long term it's not addressing the root cause of the issue.
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And pretending it does can actually make things worse as it
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reduces the motivation to take substantive action to properly address the root problem.
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Now, this is not to say that if labor shortages stayed large
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and for long enough then all 1 million young NEETs would eventually be trained up and put in jobs.
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A lot of them face other challenges with mental health, long term sickness, disabilities and caring responsibilities.
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On top of that, AI is reducing the number of entry-level roles available.
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But a lack of opportunities for skills development
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and support for transitioning into work is certainly making the total figure of young needs higher than it should be.
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In a recent survey by the Chartered Institute for Professional Development,
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35% of employers who hire migrant workers found it difficult to find UK-born workers with adequate technical skills.
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And 29% said that migrants have technical skills and qualifications that are hard to find.
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But the issue isn't entirely about gaps in skills development.
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Working in the care sector, farming, hospitality and construction is no joke.
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They are often physically demanding, low paid, with irregular working patterns and limited progression.
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Employers often can't find domestic workers for such jobs.
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At least not at the current wage, conditions and career prospects offered.
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Again, this is where immigration becomes incredibly useful.
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Because the reality is, working age migrants often come from less developed countries with less opportunities, harsher labour standards and worse pay.
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In other words, they are more willing to put up with these relatively tough working conditions by UK standards
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because it's still far better than what they can find at home.
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Let's take someone from Kyrgyzstan, for example.
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He can earn about 294,744 some working in agriculture at home, which is 2,518 pounds a year at current exchange rates.
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Or he can fly to the UK, work his butt off on a farm for six months during the busy season, and earn a minimum of 15,862 pounds.
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Then he can return home with the equivalent of six years of local agricultural wages, live like a local king, and enjoy a well-earned half a year off without needing to work at all.
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It's a very crude example and this hypothetical gentleman will return home with less after paying for flights, their visa, rent, a smidgen of tax and other costs, but it's still a massive wage arbitrage.
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For many people from low income economies, these are opportunities that are too good to pass up.
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Their opportunity cost, that is the value of the next best alternative they're giving up, is low.
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But for UK citizens, it's often an entirely different perspective.
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Low skill, high physical effort jobs in hospitality, agriculture, care or construction pay relatively little.
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Social status of the job is minimal and they often lack clear paths for career progression.
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For many people, they simply aren't jobs worthy of pursuing.
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And if you're in a privileged enough socio-economic position, you don't have to.
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In UK construction, this is brutally obvious.
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The sector needs hundreds of thousands of extra workers, but despite the government increasing financial support for apprenticeships, uptake has still dropped 16%.
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The incentives simply aren't strong enough, and it's resulted in allocative inefficiency in the labour market.
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Most young people would rather stay unemployed
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and keep applying for jobs in more favourable sectors than take a funded apprenticeship in sectors that are desperate for workers.
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Either that, or go to university.
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Which still attracts the majority despite it costing tens of thousands of pounds in debt, despite there being a well-known oversupply of graduates,
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and despite there being declining lifetime income premiums for this route.
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In response to all this, the UK government has introduced a youth guarantee, increasing funding for apprenticeships, entry-level jobs, work placements and sector-specific training pipelines to move young needs into employment.
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But it remains to be seen whether this meets the scale of the challenge.
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The UK's NEAT problem feeds into a larger subject, the subject of UK economic decline.
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According to Google search analytics, searches on this topic have exploded in the past 12 months.
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There are genuine reasons to support this notion.
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You ready?
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Economic stagnation, chronically low productivity growth, fiscally constrained public finances, local councils on the brink of bankruptcy, notoriously high energy prices, underperforming utility services,
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delayed and over budget infrastructure projects, high taxes, rising rates of theft, unprecedented political turnover in Downing Street,
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and a frustratingly complex system of compliance and regulation are all touted as signs that the UK has, to put it lightly, left much to be desired.
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But out of all these concerns, the reports that wealthy and high income individuals are leaving in droves may be the most potent
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and revealing feature on the current state of affairs in the UK.
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So what are the potential dangers of this?
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Well one of the obvious concerns is the effect it has on the tax base.
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In the UK, the top 1% of income taxpayers account for 28% of all income tax.
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If a large portion of these people leave, then so does an even larger chunk of current and future tax revenue, putting additional strain on a fiscal system that is already unable to cover its spending levels.
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If the people leaving are mostly passive asset holders, the impact may be limited.
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But if they are founders, serial entrepreneurs and investors, then the loss is not just tax revenue.
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This group drives business creation, capital deployment, employment opportunities, innovation, and the multiplier effect these things have across the wider economy.
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Now, it's worth noting that it's much easier said than done for an individual to simply uproot themselves and leave a country.
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People have families, social networks, emotional connections, physical assets, and non-mobile business structure also influence decision-making.
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But when the low-tax non-domicile regime was abolished, inheritance tax was extended to worldwide assets, and taxes on investment income were increased,
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the UK clearly became less attractive to internationally mobile wealth.
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Following these changes, New World Wealth forecasted that the UK was projected to lose around 16,500 millionaires in 2025,
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taking an estimated $91.8 billion in investable wealth with them.
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Following this, news of a millionaire exodus from the UK spread like wildfire, and the narrative still runs strong based on these forecasts to this day.
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The issue is that these statistics are dubious, if not misleading.
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The figures have faced serious criticism for inaccuracy due to a weak methodological
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and a vested interest from the source organization who profit from assisting wealthy families migrate.
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There's also academic evidence that high earners are less responsive to tax changes than headlines often suggest.
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While some wealthy individuals are undoubtedly leaving the UK, the emigration of UK millionaires is likely a much smaller matter than the mass exodus event often referenced.
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The difficulty is knowing just how many are leaving, and whether this is actually having a significant impact on the economy at large at large.
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One way to gauge that is to look at whether the UK continues to harbor entrepreneurs and investment.
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On this we know that the UK
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and London in particular continues to lead globally when it comes to tech startups and venture capital.
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London has the fourth largest tech ecosystem in the world.
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This naturally attracts entrepreneurs and high skill workers
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and its position as a leader in this space has only grown in recent years despite the recent tax changes we mentioned.
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54 of the 100 fastest growing companies in the UK have foreign-born founders
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and the city continues to have plentiful access to venture capital and other sources of investment.
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If there really was an exodus of wealth, then London's tech ecosystem would not be prospering in the way it is today.
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However, there is a more tangible change in migration patterns that we know will matter economically for the UK.
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We already covered the surge of net migration around 2023.
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But since then, restrictive government policy reforms have been introduced, resulting in a huge collapse in immigration.
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Net migration has fallen from 944,000 in 2023 to 171,000 in 2025.
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Demographers and economists are expecting net migration to go to zero
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or even negative over the next couple of years This fall
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is forecasted to have a negative impact on the economy Recent modelling predicts
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that net zero migration in the UK from now to 2030 Would result in an economy
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that is 3.6% smaller by 2040 A pretty modest figure, but not insignificant So, what does all this tell us?
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Clearly, Britain has become somewhat dependent on immigration as a shock absorber It keeps universities funded, farms staffed and hospitals running while an unstable,
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increasingly polarized government moles over harder reforms to training, wages, housing and productivity.
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Meanwhile, the millionaire exodus appears far more dramatic in headlines than in the available economic data.
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Tax competitiveness still matters and wealthy people are leaving the UK, but not to the extent illustrated in online media sources.
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And recent cuts to net migration may eventually create stronger need for the government
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and businesses to train more workers and improve incentives for currently unattractive jobs.
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But those reforms take years, while the workers, tuition fees and tax revenues disappear immediately.
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The political temptation will be to relax work and study visa rules once again to address those labour shortages.
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But if that happens without tackling the underlying structural problems, the country could find itself right back in the same position.
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In this video we covered the rise of young people not in education, employment or training in the UK.
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While the issue is particularly bad for the UK, it's actually happening across much of the developed world.
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We recently explored why.
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You should be able to click into that video on your screen now.
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Thanks for watching mate.
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Bye.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This C1 speaking lesson is built on the video “The End Game of U.K Economics”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: immigration, migration, labour, workers, shortage. This video has 256 sentences and 3923 words to shadow. The speech runs for 20:35. The speaker talks fast, about 191 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. Only 81% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding.
Key vocabulary in this video
The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| shortage noun | /ˈʃɔː(ɹ)tɪd͡ʒ/ | A lack or deficiency; an insufficient amount. |
| entrepreneur noun | /ˌɑn.tɹə.pɹəˈnɝ/ | A person who sets up a business; generally, a person who owns and manages a business and assumes its financial risks. |
| vacancy noun | /ˈveɪkənsi/ | An unoccupied position or job. |
| exodus noun | /ˈɛksədəs/ | A sudden departure of a large number of people. |
| millionaire noun | /ˌmɪl.i.əˈnɛə(ɹ)/ | Somebody whose wealth is at least one million (10⁶) currency units (usually understood to exclude holders of hyperinflated currencies). |
| migrant noun | /ˈmaɪɡɹənt/ | A migratory animal, in particular a migratory bird. |
| incentive noun | /ɪnˈsɛntɪv/ | Something that motivates, rouses, or encourages. |
| migrate verb | /maɪˈɡɹeɪt/ | To relocate periodically from one region to another, usually according to the seasons. |
| pathway noun | /ˈpæθˌweɪ/ | A footpath or other path or track. |
| humanitarian adjective | /hjuˌmæ.nəˈtɛ.ɹi.ən/ | Relating to people's welfare. |
| workforce noun | /ˈwɝk.foɹs/ | All the workers employed by a specific organization or state, or on a specific project. |
| headline noun | /ˈhɛd.laɪn/ | The heading or title of a magazine or newspaper article. |
| immigrant noun | /ˈɪmɪɡɹənt/ | A non-native person who comes to a country from another country to permanently settle there. |
| allocate verb | /ˈæl.ə.keɪt/ | To set aside for a purpose. |
| allocative adjective | Synonym of allocational (“of or pertaining to the allocation of resources”). |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| come across verb | To change sides; to cross over to work for the opposition. | |
| give up verb | To surrender (someone or something); to inform on (someone). | |
| go up verb | To move upwards. | |
| make up verb | /ˌmeɪk ˈʌp/ | To constitute, to compose. |
| pass up verb | /pɑːs ˈʌp/ | To refuse (not accept); forgo. |
| push up verb | To make (something) higher; to increase. | |
| put up with verb | To endure, tolerate, suffer through, or allow, especially something annoying. | |
| set up verb | /ˌsɛt ˈʌp/ | To make ready for use. |
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | has risen · has surged · has become |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | was meant · has been driven · was introduced |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | people who aren · person who is · group, which is |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 17 contractions and reduced forms, such as aren't, doesn't, isn't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: shortage /ˈʃɔː(ɹ)tɪd͡ʒ/, apprenticeship /əˈpɹɛn.tɪs.ʃɪp/, progression /pɹəˈɡɹɛʃən/, tuition /tjuːˈɪʃən/, exceptional /ɪkˈsɛpʃənəl/
- Long words — get the stress right: entrepreneur /ˌɑn.tɹə.pɹəˈnɝ/, millionaire /ˌmɪl.i.əˈnɛə(ɹ)/, humanitarian /hjuˌmæ.nəˈtɛ.ɹi.ən/, apprenticeship /əˈpɹɛn.tɪs.ʃɪp/, dependency /dɪˈpɛndənsi/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like shortage, entrepreneur, vacancy.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.