I had not been aware of how ESOL (English as a second language) students are a useful barometer of hard times but when you think about it, it’s obvious. Many of them are at the fringes of our economy and as such are far more ‘sensitive’ to changes than workers who are more protected.

In conversation with a colleague at work, I work in education, she mentioned how her ESOL students started needing help with their CV’s in January last year. Up till then, getting work was so easy, they just needed to turn up and they got the job. For over a year now she has been increasingly aware of how much harder her students are finding it to get work.

Add this to the news about our net outflow of Polish workers you are starting to see that in a few months another prop, the foreign worker, for the over-hyped BTL market will disappear.