Emigration statistics from the International Passenger Survey

FOI ref: FOI-2024-2042

You asked

I am writing to request information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. I would like to request the following data from the International Passenger Survey (IPS):

1. The number of British citizens aged 18-30 who have emigrated from the UK each year for the past 30 years up to 2023.

2. Any available demographic breakdown of these emigrants, including age and local authority where they lived before, also the destination country.

3. Data on the reasons for emigration as recorded by the IPS, specifically for the age group 18-30.

If this information is already available in a published report, I would appreciate it if you could direct me to the relevant document or website.

We said

Thank you for your Freedom of Information request. 

Traditionally, the IPS was the main source for estimating international migration to and from the UK. However, we had long acknowledged that the IPS had been stretched beyond its original purpose and that we needed to consider all available sources to understand international migration.  

In March 2020, the IPS was suspended because of the onset of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. In response, we have accelerated our work to transform how migration is measured and are moving towards producing administrative data-based migration estimates, supported by statistical modelling. While the IPS resumed operation in January 2021, the decision was taken and announced in the August 2020 Migration Statistics Quarterly Report (MSQR) that going forward we would continue to focus on developing methods for measuring international migration using administrative data and statistical modelling, given the limitations of the IPS. 

Having said that, up to 2019 the IPS was used and data up to 2019 from the survey is available on our website and all tables can be accessed from the Table of Contents: 

• International migration – table of contents - Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk) 

You will likely find the below tables the most helpful: 

• International Passenger Survey 3.01, citizenship by country of last or next residence, UK (Discontinued after 2019) - Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk) 

• International Passenger Survey 3.05a, citizenship by sex, UK (Discontinued after 2019) - Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk) 

• International Passenger Survey 3.05b, citizenship by age, UK - discontinued - Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk) 

• International Passenger Survey 3.14, citizenship by area of destination or origin within the UK (Discontinued after 2019) - Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk)  

The above tables cover the data you require up to 2019. 

For 2020 to 2023 we have produced some ad-hoc tables to cover this period, which are available in the associated downloads.