Explainer: navigating the Shortage Occupation List, Immigration Salary List and Temporary Shortage List

If you’ve been trying to keep up with the UK’s ever-shifting work visa landscape, you’re not alone. Over the years, the government’s method of defining which jobs are in shortage has gone through quite the transformation—from the original Shortage Occupation List to the newer Immigration Salary List and now the freshly minted Temporary Shortage List.

In this explainer, we’re focusing on the key changes that tell the story: how these lists came to be, why they’ve changed, and what it all means for workers, employers, and practitioners trying to make sense of it.

Shortage Occupation List

The introduction of the Shortage Occupation List

The Shortage Occupation List was originally introduced in the UK in 2008 as part of the points-based immigration system. As the name suggests, it contained roles that were in shortage. Employers were able to sponsor overseas workers to perform roles on the list and quickly plug skills gaps.

This was at a time when the UK was a part of the European Union, which meant workers from the EU, EEA and Switzerland (EU) had free movement rights and didn’t require sponsorship. The Shortage Occupation List’s aim was mainly to fill skilled roles that were in shortage with individuals from outside of the EU.

Advantages of the Shortage Occupation List

There were several advantages to having a role on the Shortage Occupation List:

• It meant an employer could avoid having to complete a cumbersome Resident Labour Market Test (which was abolished in 2021)
• An employer could pay the worker a lower salary
• The worker could pay reduced visa application fees
• The visa application was fast-tracked without having to pay the priority processing fee

Disadvantages of the Shortage Occupation List

Over the years, the Migration Advisory Committee conducted multiple reviews of the Shortage Occupation List, consistently aiming to ensure it remained a temporary solution for addressing skills gaps, rather than evolving into a long-term dependency that entrenched shortages in specific sectors.

What became apparent was that the so-called advantages for employers in using the list were resulting in disadvantages for workers. Namely:

• They were being paid less than the market rate making them susceptible to poor working conditions and exploitation
• The presence of low wage workers meant their fiscal contribution to the UK was minimal and if they had family members here, the risk of relying on public services was high
• There was a relatively high risk of low wage workers falling into poverty

The case for change

The Home Office commissioned the MAC’s most significant review of the Shortage Occupation List in August 2022. Before they were able to report, in late 2022 the Office for National Statistics reported that net migration had reached its highest level on record (this was mainly driven by humanitarian schemes e.g. Ukraine and Hong Kong).

This prompted the Home Office to pause the MAC’s review while they reassessed the UK’s broader immigration strategy. The work eventually resumed and over a year later in October 2023, the MAC recommended that the Shortage Occupation List should either be abolished or heavily reformed.

Arguments for abolition: One of the main reasons for arguing for abolition was the risk of exploitation and labour non-compliance. The MAC explained that the benefit of adding high-risk sectors to fill skills shortages outweighed these risks and that this trade-off is an inevitable and undesirable consequence of how the Shortage Occupation List currently functions.

Arguments for reform: If it was to be heavily reformed, they suggested:

• Reducing the number of occupation codes on the list
• Removing the 20% going rate discount
• Renaming the list from the Shortage Occupation List to the Immigration Salary Discount List – to better reflect its function

The issue with reform rather than abolition is that it would not address the issue of using immigration policy to resolve the problem of skills gaps in the UK. It makes more sense to understand why those gaps exist in the first place.

Immigration Salary List

The introduction of the Immigration Salary List

Two months after the MAC’s report, in December 2023, the Home Secretary announced a ‘five-point plan’ to lower net migration.

The second point of that plan confirmed a nearly 50% increase to the salary requirements, which took the general salary threshold to a whopping £38,700 (up from £26,200). The third point related to roles in shortage. The Home Secretary said:

…[We] will scrap cut-price shortage labour from overseas by ending the 20% going rate salary discount for shortage occupations and reforming the shortage occupations list. I have asked the Migration Advisory Committee to review the occupations on the list because of our new higher skilled worker salary threshold, and we will create a new immigration salary list, with a reduced number of occupations, in co-ordination with MAC.

The MAC was asked to carry out a rapid review, rather than a full review, of the proposed Immigration Salary List in January 2024. This meant they didn’t get the opportunity or time to consult external stakeholders, even though such input is arguably vital for understanding the labour market.

The limited utility of the Immigration Salary List

The MAC used the best data available to complete the rapid review and recommended that the Immigration Salary List should include only 21 occupation codes. This reflects a significant contraction in sponsorship eligibility under the skilled worker route, falling from 30% to 8% of all codes. See our previous coverage on this here.

With fewer jobs on the list, the scrapping of the going rate discount, and salary thresholds soaring to historic highs, it became hard to tell what the Immigration Salary List was actually for. The MAC asked the government for clarification of the long-term purpose of the list. No clarification came.

On 4 April 2024, the Immigration Salary List replaced the Shortage Occupation List via a statement of changes to the immigration rules.

At the time, the 4 April 2024 changes were the most sweeping reforms since Brexit, though with hindsight, we now know they were merely the opening credits to a much longer drama. What felt seismic then would soon reveal itself as the inflection point – the moment the narrative truly turned.

The case for further change

Almost a year later, the plot thickened. The government rolled out sweeping immigration reforms, rewriting the rules once again. Here’s how it unfolded:

• On 12 May 2025, the government announced the abolition of the Immigration Salary List and a new Temporary Shortage List in the white paper titled ‘Restoring control of the Immigration System’
• On 23 June 2025, the government unveiled the UK’s Modern Industrial Strategy, which aligns migration pathways more tightly with economic and industrial priorities.
• On 1 July 2025, the government published a statement of changes to the immigration rules: HC997, which introduced the new skilled worker requirements and the Temporary Shortage List.
• On 2 July 2025, the government commissioned the MAC to review the salary requirements and the Temporary Shortage List. See our coverage on this here.
• On 22 July 2025, the new immigration rules and the Temporary Shortage List came into force.

So, in a nutshell, the government decided to abolish the Immigration Salary List (as recommended by the MAC back in 2023) and replace it with the Temporary Shortage List. Meanwhile the skilled worker route was also overhauled.

Temporary Shortage List

The introduction of the Temporary Shortage List

The Temporary Shortage List includes occupations which are in long-term shortage and have been identified as being important for the Modern Industrial Strategy. The strategy is distinct from what formed the basis of the Shortage Occupation List and Immigration Salary List. Some of the initiatives are brand new. It introduces new priority sectors, new expert groups, and a new global talent taskforce. It marks a further (huge) change in policy.

In the Modern Industrial Strategy policy paper, the government states that sectors facing shortages will be supported by a workforce strategy linked to skills and training. A new expert group called the Labour Market Evidence Group is responsible for the process of producing these strategies. It comprises the Industrial Strategy Advisory Council, Migration Advisory Committee, Skills England (and equivalent organisations in the devolved governments) and the Department for Work and Pensions.

The group will share evidence to support the development of strategies to ensure that the sectors identified as priority sectors have the skilled workers they need. The purpose is summarised in the white paper:

For occupations with a skills requirement of RQF 3-5 (below degree level) where there have been long term shortages, we will only permit use of the Points-Based immigration system on a time limited basis where the MAC has advised it is justified, where there is a workforce strategy in place, and where employers seeking to recruit from abroad are committed to playing their part in increasing recruitment from the domestic workforce.

What this means is the Temporary Shortage List is truly temporary in nature. Occupation codes can be added and removed by the Labour Market Evidence Group where they project skills gaps, and where they want employers to play a role in developing the skills of the domestic workforce. We don’t know yet what this will look like, but the white paper says that if and when a formal sector workforce strategy is required, they’ll ensure such a plan is in place in time by spring 2026.

Spring 2026 is a key date, as the MAC has been commissioned to review the Temporary Shortage List and to report in two stages. The first stage is due in January 2026 and the second stage, which should include engagement with external stakeholders, is due in July 2026.

The limited utility of the Temporary Shortage List

When the Temporary Shortage List was introduced, the following important changes were also rolled out to the skilled worker route:

• An increase to the general salary threshold to £41,700 (up from £38,700)
• A higher skill level (more on this below)
• Two sets of transitional arrangements for those sponsored with a certificate of sponsorship assigned before 4 April 2024, and those sponsored with a certificate of sponsorship assigned between 4 April 2024 and 21 July 2025
• New restrictions on bringing dependants (more on this below)
• The closure of the skilled worker entry-clearance route for carers and senior carers

The change to skill level is important, because the Temporary Shortage List can only be used for RQF 3-5 roles, which includes roles skilled to below degree level – we explain the significance of this and how it works next.

The restriction on dependants is a key too, as Temporary Shortage List-sponsored workers are not permitted to bring family members to the UK – we’ll visit this later on in this explainer.

Skill level is set against Ofqual’s Regulated Qualification Framework (RQF), which indexes qualifications e.g. RQF Level 3-5 is aligned to A-level and RQF Level 6+ is aligned to bachelor degree level or above. A skilled worker doesn’t have to have a qualification to perform the role, but the role must be skilled to the required RQF level.

When the points-based system was first introduced, eligibility was set at RQF Level 6 and above. Following Brexit, the threshold was lowered to RQF Levels 3 – 5. A lower skill level broadened the scope of eligible occupations for the skilled worker route. This more inclusive approach was reversed on 22 July 2025, when the government reinstated the RQF Level 6+ requirement, though some exceptions remain for specific roles or sectors.

Over the course of this time, occupation codes at various skill levels and going rates were reshuffled. They’re currently based on Standard Occupation Classification (SOC) 2020.

As a result, Appendix Skilled Occupations has been redrafted several times. Its latest version includes a complex, byzantine structure of tables containing occupation codes at various skill level. It’s user-unfriendly and the table descriptions are misleading.

Here is a summary of the RQF level for each table in Appendix Skilled Occupations. If you’re looking at this and assessing an applicant’s eligibility, you’ll need to read the immigration rules in Appendix Skilled Worker in full (paragraphs SW 6.1 to SW 6.5 relate to skill level).

This is where you would throw up your hands and say, why are we talking about skill level and how on earth does the Immigration Salary List and Temporary Shortage List fit into this overgrown logic trail?

An overlapping Immigration Salary List and Temporary Shortage List

The Immigration Salary List and Temporary Shortage List are currently running side by side, but the white paper confirms that the Temporary Shortage List will eventually replace the Immigration Salary List. This is a tad confusing because:

• The Immigration Salary List and Temporary Shortage List are underpinned by different policy rationale
• Both lists essentially have a new expiry date of 31 December 2024 (note there’s an exception for 6135 Care workers and home carers and 6136 Senior care workers)
• The explanatory memorandum to the statement of changes says the Immigration Salary List will be phased out rather than expiring point blank

Ignoring the rationale for the moment, the practical takeaway is that a skilled worker applicant can rely on an occupation code on either list if they are eligible to do so. Provided they have a certificate of sponsorship assigned by 31 December 2024, their immigration permission can run beyond this date.

You should check each list before you assign a certificate of sponsorship (source links below) and note that sometimes a code can appear on both lists, and a code may have restrictions attached.

Here’s a comparison of the Immigration Salary List and Temporary Shortage List:

Temporary Shortage List and dependent family members

Another issue that limits the utility of the Temporary Shortage List is the restriction on bringing dependants for Temporary Shortage List-sponsored workers. Here’s how it works:

The rules on dependant eligibility are in SW 29.1 and SW 29.1A of Appendix Skilled Worker. Be aware that limited exceptions apply to the restriction e.g. dependent children born in the UK.

The future of the Immigration Salary List and Temporary Shortage List

To recap, both the Immigration Salary List and Temporary Shortage List are temporary in nature and both lists are fluid, which means that occupation codes can be added (via a statement of changes), and the stated removal date can be brought forward if there is evidence of non-compliance.  For skilled workers, this introduces a layer of uncertainty. If their role is removed before their visa extension or settlement application, they may no longer meet the eligibility criteria, especially if their salary falls below the general threshold or the job is no longer considered skilled enough under RQF Level 6+.

Another key aspect of the white paper, adding to the uncertainty, is the proposed reform to settlement. Aside from the proposal to extend the default qualifying period from five to ten years, it’s not yet clear if a transitional arrangement will apply to existing skilled workers and it is unclear if Temporary Shortage List-sponsored workers will ever be eligible to settle.

There’s no timeline for the earned settlement changes coming into force, but Seema Malhotra, the Minister for Migration and Citizenship stated: 

We will be consulting on the earned settlement scheme later this year and will provide details of how the scheme will work after that, including which immigration routes it will apply to.

Due to public outcry and two e-petitions, a parliamentary debate is scheduled to take place on 8 September 2025.  The Immigration Salary List and Temporary Shortage List are not standing still, and neither should we. The next chapter is already on the horizon.