Category: Uncategorized

Open Letter: Building the workforce strand of the UK’s “National Care Service”

Posted on July 30, 2026 by - Uncategorized

Rt Hon Yvette Cooper MP, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Department of Health and Social Care

Rt Hon Shabana Mahmood MP, Secretary of State for the Home Department, Home Office

RE: Building the workforce strand of the National Care Service

Dear Secretaries of State,

Yesterday the Prime Minister committed to end “decades of political drift” on social care, setting out plans to accelerate the creation of a National Care Service, and to govern this issue by “a new way of doing politics” – cross-party, evidence-led, built with the sector rather than around it.

The Secretary of State – Rt Hon Yvette Cooper MP’s – own remarks, invoking Barbara Castle’s insistence that health and social care must work hand in hand, set the same test. We write to help meet it. Labour Mobility Partnerships (LaMP) has spent 15 months building the evidence base for exactly the kind of workforce reform now under discussion: over 100 organisations consulted – providers, employers, worker representatives and migration policy experts – with findings tested publicly at the APPG on Migration and Adult Social Care roundtable on 9 June, chaired by Tim Farron MP, and set out in full in our forthcoming White Paper. The proposals below are the product of that work.

With Baroness Casey’s Commission now accelerated to report next summer, the Big Conversation on Care open for evidence, and Secretary Cooper chairing a new ministerial group to drive delivery, there are three live channels for this work to land in immediately. We ask you to use ours in all three. Workforce reform is also the one part of this agenda that does not have to wait for consensus on funding or system design – it can start now.

The scale of the problem

The UK’s over-80 population will nearly double by 2045, and the sector will need 470,000 additional care workers just to keep pace. Today, 131,000 posts sit unfilled. Left unaddressed, that gap means fewer care packages, more strain on unpaid family carers, and rising pressure on the NHS as gaps in social care provision push demand into acute settings.

We support the decision to close the overseas care visa route to new applicants in response to exploitation risks. But more than 20,000 migrant care workers displaced by sponsor licence revocations remain out of work a year on, with no clear route back into a sector short of hands.

That is not a side effect to manage – it is a workforce the system is currently wasting. No single lever fixes this. It needs the Department of Health and Social Care, the Home Office and the sector moving together, not in sequence.

Three actions the government can take now:

  1. Stand up a national registry of care workers. Most of the pieces already exist, scattered across programmes and institutions. Bringing them together – to verify skills, qualifications and immigration status in one place – is a coordination task, not a new build, and it is the fastest way to get displaced, already-trained workers back into vacant roles safely.
  2. Fund workforce matching and bridging support properly. Regional matching schemes convert only 10–15% of placements and vary sharply by region – a postcode lottery for displaced workers, made worse by recent funding cuts and no visibility on what comes next. Stable, predictable funding for skills recognition, matching and bridging support would fix this. More money without a plan will not.
  3. Extend the 60-day sponsor-change window to at least 120 days. Sixty days is not enough time for a displaced worker to find a new sponsor. It pushes trained, willing workers out of the sector for good. This sits with the Home Office, but the workforce cost lands on the Department of Health and Social Care – which is precisely the kind of cross-departmental gap this letter is asking you to close together.

Four principles to guide the workforce strand

These should sit alongside the Prime Minister’s own principles for the National Care Service:

  • Industry-led and demand-driven – international recruitment should respond to evidenced shortages, via mechanisms such as a Temporary Shortage List, not be fixed in advance.
  • Transparent and rights-respecting by design – with greater visa portability and stronger worker protections, so exploitation risk cannot again destabilise the sector.
  • Complementary to domestic investment – international recruitment should support pay, progression and retention, not substitute for it.
  • Standards set at source – government-to-government agreements with origin countries to strengthen ethical recruitment and pre-departure training.

We would welcome the chance to put this evidence directly to Secretary Cooper’s ministerial group, and to submit it formally to Baroness Casey’s Commission and the Big Conversation on Care. Our findings have already been stress-tested with the sector once, at the APPG roundtable in June – we would welcome the opportunity to do so again with government, before positions harden rather than after.

Yours sincerely,

Salvatore Petronella, Associate Director

Laurel Hart, Strategic Communications Manager

Labour Mobility Partnerships (LaMP)

WORKSHOP How to Predict Unit Costs of Migration

Posted on July 15, 2026 by - Uncategorized

The Mobility Finance Network‘s June 2026 webinar introduced a toolkit that accounts for dropout rates and overhead to help price migration programs more accurately. MFN Founder and LaMP CFO Elicia Carmichael showed how to:

1. Understand how attrition affects per-unit cost calculations,
2. Apply a structured framework for capturing overhead in migration pricing, and
3. Build sharper, more defensible cost models for your programs.

You can access the session’s resources below:

  • Excel template: A ready-to-use version of the cost model shared during the workshop, so you can start applying it to your own programs right away.

  • Recording: In case you want to revisit how to use the tool or share it with a colleague who couldn’t attend.
  • Slides: You can use our slide deck to follow along with the video and reference later.

If you have any questions as you work through the template, or if you’d like to share how you’re applying it, don’t hesitate to reach out. We’d love to hear from you.

 

The Mobility Finance Network is an initiative powered by LaMP that fosters collaboration, knowledge-sharing, and innovation to cultivate financial tools for workers on the move and the businesses that support them. To learn more about the MFN, sign up for announcements here.

Building Labor Mobility Pathways in North Dakota

Posted on June 19, 2026 by - Uncategorized

North Dakota faces one of the most acute labor shortages in the United States, with only 30 available workers for every 100 open jobs. In response, the state established the Global Talent Office (GTO) in 2023 to help businesses recruit and retain foreign-born talent–and turned to LaMP for expert guidance on building an effective, evidence-based labor mobility strategy. 

Since 2024, LaMP has served as a strategic advisor to the GTO across two phases of engagement. In the first phase, in partnership with Dalberg Associates, LaMP led a comprehensive assessment of the state’s workforce gaps, employer barriers, and visa pathway options–delivering a prioritized roadmap that now guides the office’s work. In the second phase, LaMP continues to support implementation through research, stakeholder convenings, and hands-on technical assistance, including designing a first-of-its-kind public visa navigation tool and co-producing North Dakota’s annual Global Talent Summit. 

North Dakota is at the frontier of state-led labor mobility innovation–and LaMP’s work with the GTO is helping establish a model other states can follow.  

You can also find the project description here.

Interview With GTO Office Director

Ageing is (in) the future for the USA 

Posted on May 21, 2026 by - Uncategorized

In the first Matrix movie Agent Smith is holding Neo down on the subway tracks as a train approaches and says: “You hear that, Mr. Anderson? … That is the sound of inevitability…”

Demography has that flavor. Over the medium run (10 to 30 years) demography is perhaps the most predictable part of our future. After all, if you want to know how many people thirty year olds there will be in the economically distant future of 2056, just count babies today (with some modest adjustments).

Ageing: The Real Demographic Challenge

The primary phenomena that all rich industrial countries will experience over the next 30 years is not “de-population” – that is coming (see Geruso and Spears, here and here) just later – but ageing. Over the coming years the population of the labor force aged will fall absolutely and the population of those over 65 will rise by about the same amount. This means that the total population will stay about the same, but will be much older.

I have written papers that document the implications of that for the future of the ratio of the labor force aged to 65 plus (many of whom are also in the labor force) for the rich industrial countries using the standard global sources for population projections, with an emphasis on the “zero migration” scenarios (here and here).

What the Congressional Budget Office Data Shows

In this post I use the recent (January 2026) projections of the US population done by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to document these trends for the USA. While in previous papers I used global data to have comparability, here I use an official US source to focus on just the USA. A strength of the CBO data is that they have detailed projections of migration by age which allows the calculations of a “zero migration” scenario for specific age groups.

I use the CBO projections of the “Social Security” population of the USA and then use their data on the immigration and emigration to calculate the net immigration by age groups 0-19, 20 to 64, and 65 plus. I deduct the cumulated net immigration from the CBO projections to estimate the evolution of the labor force aged and 65 plus populations of the USA under the scenario of zero net immigration after 2026.

The Zero Net Immigration Scenario

Figure 1: In a scenario of zero net immigration the labor force (LF) aged (20-64) population of the USA falls by 20.5 million and the 65 plus population rises 21.9 million. The ratio of labor force aged to 65 plus falls from 3.1 to 2.1.

Source: My calculations with data from the downloadable CBO data.

Between 2026 and 2056 the adult population of the USA actually rises a bit (the total population falls as, like the labor force aged, the young population falls substantially) but only because the rise in the 65 plus population offsets the fall in the labor force aged.

“Locked In”: Why Births Today Won’t Save Us

While there is a lot of debate currently about what, if anything, can be done to raise the number of births (Kearney and Levine 2022, 2025, Geruso and Spears 2026, Gauthier and Gietel-Basten 2025, Doepke et al 2023), over these horizons of a few decades the demographic is nearly all “locked in” (Goldstone). Even if births began to rise tomorrow, and rose steadily and substantially, this was no impact on the number of labor force aged 10 or 20 years from now as it just always takes a year for a person to be a year older and barely make a dent even by 2056.

While the decline in the total labor force aged is gradual and the slope seems modest. it is important. One, this is a qualitatively different demographic future than the USA’s past where “rates of natural increase” (births less deaths) led to a growing labor force. Two, from 2026 to 2036 the zero-migration scenario labor force aged declines by 3.32 million people, which is only cumulatively about 1.5 percent. But the population of Pittsburgh (not SMSA, just city) in 2024 was 307,000 and Cincinnati’s population was 315,000. So every year the USA loses a Pittsburgh or Cincinnati in the labor force aged. Three, even the gradual losses cumulate. The cumulative decline by 2056 is 20.5 million which is the combined population of the Metro areas (Standard Metropolitan Statistical Areas, not just city limits) populations of: Orlando, Charlotte, Baltimore, St. Louis, San Antonio, Oakland, and Miami).

But again, the demographic challenge is not so much the absolute decline in labor force aged but the combination of that decline with a larger increase in the population over 65. This matters fiscally as substantial parts of US budget are labor tax financed programs for those over 65 (Social Security and Medicare) – hence the interest of the CBO in long-run demographic projections. If we call the ratio of 20-64 to 65 plus the “support ratio” this falls from 3.1 in 2026 (and the fiscal squeeze is already felt) to only 2.1 in 2056. At current labor force participation rates this would imply well less than two people in the labor force for every person over 65.

The Gap That Needs Filling

Starting from the zero migration scenario we can ask “how many additional labor force aged people would be required to keep the support ratio at its current value of 3.07?” The results are shown in Table 1 for 2036 and 2056. This is where the numbers get eye-popping. Between 2026 and 2036 Labor force aged (20-64) population only falls by 3.32 million. But the 65 plus population grew by 11.8 million. To keep the support ratio constant at its 2026 value of 3.07 that means the USA would need 36.25 more people of labor force age. Otherwise, in just 10 years the support ratio would fall from 3.07 to 2.56. That means the “labor force aged gap for a constant support ratio” is 39.6 million people even after only 10 years of zero migration.

And by 2056 these numbers are very large. The labor force gap is 87.9 million people. There are 21.9 million more old which is a 2026 support ratio constant need for 67.4 million more labor force aged but the demography with zero migration produces 20.5 million less labor force aged.

Table 1: Additional population of labor force aged to keep the support ratio (labor force aged to 65 plus) constant at its 2026 value relative to a zero migration scenario

Year Total additional labor force aged needed (mns)
(col IV less II)		 Decline in labor force aged relative to 2026 (mns) Increase in 65 plus population relative to 2026 (mns) Additional LF aged needed to keep support ratio at 2026 level (mns) Ratio in zero migration scenario
I II III IV V
2026 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 3.07
2036 39.57 −3.32 11.79 36.25 2.56
2056 87.94 −20.54 21.92 67.40 2.07

Source: My calculations with CBO data.

In this particular blog I am just laying out the implications of existing demographic projections, not carrying out an analysis nor making “recommendations.” The facts are that the absence of some terrible catastrophe there will be many more people over 65 in the future. And there will be many fewer younger people, including many fewer people in the traditional ages for high labor force participation. This will have many consequences for the economy and the fiscal balances of the federal government and policy will have to adjust to these demographic shifts in ways that are going to be political painful (raising taxes on the few number of workers would be painful, lowering pension or health benefits of the older population would be painful). One margin of adjustment is creating more legal modalities for labor mobility.

 

This blog was originally published on Substack.

Strengthening Labour Mobility in the UK Care Sector

Posted on March 17, 2026 by - Uncategorized

Context 

The UK faces a rapidly ageing population, with demand for social care outpacing supply despite efforts to expand the domestic workforce. At the same time, the closure of the Health and Care Worker visa to new applicants in July 2025 has left employers struggling to meet demand, limiting access to experienced overseas care workers and leaving providers short-staffed and the economy exposed. 

Our Approach 

The Labour Mobility Partnerships UK programme tackles this challenge through a two-pronged strategy: 

– Practical Bridging & Skills Response – Displaced care workers who are already trained and experienced can be protected and redeployed quickly through bridging programmes. This addresses urgent care demand, supports worker retention, and reduces exploitation risks. 

– Systemic Reform – Advocating for a smarter, future-proof immigration framework that aligns labour mobility with structural demographic needs, ensures access to critical occupations, and strengthens the UK’s long-term social care capacity. 

We deliver this work through consultation and dialogue with government, public and private sector, civil society organisations, and migrant workers. By anchoring our efforts in the care sector, we demonstrate what is possible today, build the evidence base for policy reforms, and create a space for constructive dialogue on how migration systems can better meet labour market needs. 

This programme is supported by the Open Society Foundations (OSF). 

Looking Ahead 

By focusing on the care sector, we can develop and test practical solutions for workforce mobility, skills recognition, and visa portability. These lessons create a blueprint that can be adapted to other sectors experiencing labour shortages.

Read more:

 

 

 

 

To learn more or get involved, please contact:

Salvatore Petronella

spetronella@lampforum.org

 

 

WEBINAR Meet the Investors Behind Mobility Finance

Posted on February 25, 2026 by - Uncategorized

The Mobility Finance Network‘s June 2026 webinar introduced a toolkit that accounts for dropout rates and overhead to help price migration programs more accurately. MFN Founder and LaMP CFO Elicia Carmichael showed how to:

1. Understand how attrition affects per-unit cost calculations,
2. Apply a structured framework for capturing overhead in migration pricing, and
3. Build sharper, more defensible cost models for your programs.

You can access the session’s resources below:

  • Excel template: A ready-to-use version of the cost model shared during the workshop, so you can start applying it to your own programs right away.

  • Recording: In case you want to revisit how to use the tool or share it with a colleague who couldn’t attend.
  • Slides: You can use our slide deck to follow along with the video and reference later.

If you have any questions as you work through the template, or if you’d like to share how you’re applying it, don’t hesitate to reach out. We’d love to hear from you.

 

The Mobility Finance Network is an initiative powered by LaMP that fosters collaboration, knowledge-sharing, and innovation to cultivate financial tools for workers on the move and the businesses that support them. To learn more about the MFN, sign up for announcements here.

What Makes Language Learning Work for Cross-Border Migration?

Posted on February 12, 2026 by - Uncategorized

Context 

The UK faces a rapidly ageing population, with demand for social care outpacing supply despite efforts to expand the domestic workforce. At the same time, the closure of the Health and Care Worker visa to new applicants in July 2025 has left employers struggling to meet demand, limiting access to experienced overseas care workers and leaving providers short-staffed and the economy exposed. 

Our Approach 

The Labour Mobility Partnerships UK programme tackles this challenge through a two-pronged strategy: 

– Practical Bridging & Skills Response – Displaced care workers who are already trained and experienced can be protected and redeployed quickly through bridging programmes. This addresses urgent care demand, supports worker retention, and reduces exploitation risks. 

– Systemic Reform – Advocating for a smarter, future-proof immigration framework that aligns labour mobility with structural demographic needs, ensures access to critical occupations, and strengthens the UK’s long-term social care capacity. 

We deliver this work through consultation and dialogue with government, public and private sector, civil society organisations, and migrant workers. By anchoring our efforts in the care sector, we demonstrate what is possible today, build the evidence base for policy reforms, and create a space for constructive dialogue on how migration systems can better meet labour market needs. 

This programme is supported by the Open Society Foundations (OSF). 

Looking Ahead 

By focusing on the care sector, we can develop and test practical solutions for workforce mobility, skills recognition, and visa portability. These lessons create a blueprint that can be adapted to other sectors experiencing labour shortages.

Read more:

 

 

 

 

To learn more or get involved, please contact:

Salvatore Petronella

spetronella@lampforum.org

 

 

WEBINAR Financing Mobility Together: Cross-border cost-sharing models for apprenticeships in Germany

Posted on February 10, 2026 by - Uncategorized

The Mobility Finance Network‘s June 2026 webinar introduced a toolkit that accounts for dropout rates and overhead to help price migration programs more accurately. MFN Founder and LaMP CFO Elicia Carmichael showed how to:

1. Understand how attrition affects per-unit cost calculations,
2. Apply a structured framework for capturing overhead in migration pricing, and
3. Build sharper, more defensible cost models for your programs.

You can access the session’s resources below:

  • Excel template: A ready-to-use version of the cost model shared during the workshop, so you can start applying it to your own programs right away.

  • Recording: In case you want to revisit how to use the tool or share it with a colleague who couldn’t attend.
  • Slides: You can use our slide deck to follow along with the video and reference later.

If you have any questions as you work through the template, or if you’d like to share how you’re applying it, don’t hesitate to reach out. We’d love to hear from you.

 

The Mobility Finance Network is an initiative powered by LaMP that fosters collaboration, knowledge-sharing, and innovation to cultivate financial tools for workers on the move and the businesses that support them. To learn more about the MFN, sign up for announcements here.

Opening New Labor Pathways from Colombia to Spain: A Scalable Finance and Ecosystem Support Model

Posted on February 9, 2026 by - Uncategorized

This brief outlines potential labor mobility pathways from Latin America to Spain for workers (including nationals, migrants and refugees). Labor Mobility Partnerships (LaMP) completed an eight-month scoping effort to identify viable and scalable program models across sectors facing acute labor shortages, including trucking hospitality, construction, and elderly care. This document highlights LaMP’s proposal for a pilot initiative to catalyze safe, legal labor mobility pathways from Colombia to Spain by aligning employer demand with workers (including nationals, migrants and refugees) through market-driven mechanisms.

You can download the full version in English and Spanish.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Learn more about LaMP’s further work designing feasible labor mobility programs from Latin America to Spain on the project’s page here.

 

 

 

Opening New Labor Pathways from Latin America to Spain: Elderly Care Sector

Posted on February 9, 2026 by - Uncategorized

This brief outlines potential labor mobility pathways from Latin America to Spain for workers (including nationals, migrants and refugees). Labor Mobility Partnerships (LaMP) completed an eight-month scoping effort to identify viable and scalable program models across sectors facing acute labor shortages, including trucking hospitality, construction, and elderly care. This document highlights LaMP’s proposal for a pilot initiative to catalyze safe, legal labor mobility pathways from Colombia to Spain by aligning employer demand with workers (including nationals, migrants and refugees) through market-driven mechanisms.

You can download the full version in English and Spanish.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Learn more about LaMP’s further work designing feasible labor mobility programs from Latin America to Spain on the project’s page here.

 

 

 

Opening New Labor Pathways from Latin America to Spain: Trucking Industry

Posted on February 9, 2026 by - Uncategorized

This brief outlines potential labor mobility pathways from Latin America to Spain for workers (including nationals, migrants and refugees). Labor Mobility Partnerships (LaMP) completed an eight-month scoping effort to identify viable and scalable program models across sectors facing acute labor shortages, including trucking hospitality, construction, and elderly care. This document highlights LaMP’s proposal for a pilot initiative to catalyze safe, legal labor mobility pathways from Colombia to Spain by aligning employer demand with workers (including nationals, migrants and refugees) through market-driven mechanisms.

You can download the full version in English and Spanish.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Learn more about LaMP’s further work designing feasible labor mobility programs from Latin America to Spain on the project’s page here.