National Insurance
From House of Yres on X
2.2 MILLION NATIONAL INSURANCE REGISTRATIONS TO ADULT OVERSEAS NATIONALS IN THREE YEARS.
Who is registering, what nationalities are recorded, and where in the UK are they based? Here’s what the DWP’s Stat-Xplore data shows.
📊 THE ANNUAL TOTALS
• 2023/24: 1,000,530 • 2024/25: 642,210 • 2025/26: 561,508
Registrations fell by 12.6% in the latest year and by 43.9% compared with 2023/24. That decline belongs in the picture too.
🌍 THE 15 LARGEST NATIONALITY GROUPS April 2025–March 2026:
🇮🇳 India — 119,186 🇵🇰 Pakistan — 44,342 🇳🇬 Nigeria — 43,485 🇨🇳 China — 27,769 🇳🇵 Nepal — 23,566 🇺🇸 United States — 16,067 🇧🇩 Bangladesh — 15,264 🇺🇦 Ukraine — 12,843 🇮🇪 Ireland — 11,893 🇮🇷 Iran — 10,700 🇦🇺 Australia — 9,842 🇦🇫 Afghanistan — 9,480 🇬🇭 Ghana — 9,018 🇪🇷 Eritrea — 8,580 🇸🇩 Sudan — 7,703
Indian, Pakistani and Nigerian nationals together accounted for 207,013 registrations — 36.9% of the annual total. Across the full three years, the table records:
• India: 495,204 • Pakistan: 200,068 • Nigeria: 188,127
That is approximately 883,400 registrations from those three nationalities — 40.1% of the three-year total.
📍 WHERE IN THE UK?
For the year ending March 2026, DWP reports that 43% of registrations with a known UK address were in London or the South East.
The five largest local-authority totals, rounded by DWP, were:
• Newham — 18,000 • Birmingham — 18,000 • Manchester — 13,000 • Tower Hamlets — 10,000 • Glasgow City — 9,700
These locations reflect the address recorded when the person registered. What do these figures actually measure?
National Insurance registrations, classified by nationality at registration. They do not count everyone arriving during those years, measure net migration, or tell us how many people are still in the UK. Nationality also does not necessarily identify the country someone travelled from. A useful part of understanding migration — provided we are clear about what the numbers show.
Source: DWP / Stat-Xplore, “NINo Registrations to Adult Overseas Nationals Entering the UK”. [DWP statistical release](https://gov.uk/government/statistics/national-insurance-numbers-allocated-to-adult-overseas-nationals-to-march-2026) Trace. Verify. Record. We are HOUSE.