The number of Eastern Europeans coming to Britain is slowing down, suggest official figures

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However, the number of Eastern Europeans coming to Britain still remains much higher than before EU enlargement in 2004.

Figures from the Office for National Statistics show 820,000 residents of the 12 countries which joined the EU in the last three years entered the UK in the three months to October, compared with 916,000 for the same period last year.

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Immigration slowdown? Official statistics show that the number of Eastern Europeans coming to Britain is down 11% year-on-year

This includes people here to work, on business trips, students and tourists.

The revelation comes as the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development said next year looked like being 'easily the worst' for jobs since Labour came to power in 1997.

Employment will increase by just 0.25 per cent over the next 12 months, well down on rises recorded in the past few years, said the report.

The number of jobless is predicted to increase by 150,000 to 1.8 million, the highest for more than a decade, but is dependent on immigration levels.

The institute's chief economist John Philpott said: "In the early part of the decade, periods of slower growth in private sector employment were masked by relatively rapid growth in public sector jobs.

"A downward trend in public sector employment in the past two years has in turn been more than offset by rising numbers of private sector jobs.

"But 2008 will be the first year for a decade that the engine of job creation will be spluttering right across the economy.

"With higher fuel costs and food prices set to raise the cost of living in the first half of the year the squeeze on real incomes experienced by many workers in 2007 will continue to bite in 2008.

"With jobs also harder to come by this could reinforce the impact of the economic slowdown, possibly necessitating bigger cuts in interest rates... to head off the threat of recession."

A House of Commons Library report showed half a million fewer people born in Britain are in work following the influx of Eastern Europeans. In 2003, 24,473,000 people of working age born in the UK held jobs but this number has fallen to 23,948,000, a drop of 525,000.