Immigration has been central in recent UK policy debates and has attracted significant concern over its
possible adverse effect on labour market outcomes. This paper contributes to the evidence on this issue
by presenting initial results on the impact of migration inflow s on the claimant count rate using previously
unused data on National Insurance Number registrations of foreign nationals. Our results, w hich appear
robust to different specifications, different levels of geographic aggregation, and to a number of tests,
seem to confirm the lack of any impact of migration on unemployment in aggregate. We find no
association betw een migrant inflow s and claimant unemployment. In addition, w e test for w hether the
impact of migration on claimant unemployment varies according to the state of the economic cycle. We
find no evidence of a more adverse during periods of low grow th or the recent recession.