The claim: The average migrant contributes £341,000 over their lifetime.

Misuse

an illustration for one modelled individual read as a typical outcome, with an unstated endpoint age doing the arithmetic

Direction

pro-migration

What the data says

The Office for Budget Responsibility does not publish this number, or any number like it. What it published is a chart, 4.13 in Fiscal risks and sustainability, corrected in November 2024. The chart draws the cumulative net fiscal contribution of a representative migrant who arrives at 25 on the UK average wage, modelled as an individual with no dependants, against a UK resident on the same basis. It is a line running from age 25 to age 100. OBR states no single value anywhere in the text and singles out no age on the line.

Any figure quoted from it is somebody's choice of where to stop. Read from the chart's own data, the line rises through working life, peaks while the person is in their sixties, falls once they are drawing a pension and using health care, and is negative by age 100 where the chart ends. Those readings are recorded in this site's own record for the figure, with the value at each age, because the age moves the sign as well as the size. So the same chart supports a large positive figure, a smaller positive figure, or a negative one, depending only on the age chosen, and nothing in the claim says which age it used.

This site reads it at 82 and publishes £297,000. That age is not a better answer, it is a stated one: it is the life expectancy OBR's own text gives an average person in 2028, which makes it the only candidate age the publication itself gives a reason for. The reading is graded as an estimate rather than an official figure, because it is this site's reading of a chart and not a value OBR prints.

And this site published £341,000 until 3 August 2026. That was the same chart read at 80, an age nobody here had written down. It moved when the age was chosen and recorded, and no publisher released anything new in between. That is the clearest available demonstration of what the claim is doing: the figure changed by tens of thousands of pounds because somebody picked a different year to stop at, and the page carrying it had looked equally confident before and after.

Why the claim is misleading

"The average migrant" is the wrong noun for a single modelled individual. The chart's subject is one hypothetical person with fixed characteristics: arriving at 25, earning the average wage, with no dependants in the model. Real arrivals come at every age, on every wage, and many bring dependants, whom the modelled individual does not have. An illustration built to show how the answer moves with circumstances is being quoted as though it had averaged over them.

The endpoint does the arithmetic, and it is never stated. A claim of this shape is only meaningful with an age attached, and the version that circulates carries none. Two people quoting the same chart in good faith can differ by hundreds of thousands of pounds and neither is misreading it.

The same analysis makes a low-earning migrant a net cost. Chart 4.13 draws the average-wage case alongside a low-earnings one, which is negative over a lifetime, and a high-earnings one considerably further positive. This site's page on whether immigrants pay more than they cost has said so since 27 July 2026. Quoting the average-wage line alone is selecting the middle of a set whose spread is the finding.

It presents a projection as a measurement. The chart is a model of the future under stated assumptions about earnings, taxes, benefits, health spending and pensions over seventy-five years. Assumptions made in 2024 about 2099 are not observations, and OBR publishes them as risks and scenarios for that reason.

And the broader evidence does not settle in either direction. Studies of the net fiscal impact of immigration find effects small in magnitude relative to the economy, positive in some and negative in others, across different periods, groups and methods. That is a set of separate studies rather than one estimate with a margin around it, so it cannot be collapsed into a figure either. This site's page on whether immigrants pay more than they cost sets that out, and a single lifetime figure is not a shortcut past it.

What the claim gets right

The chart is real, it is official, and it is not a fringe source. OBR is the government's own fiscal watchdog and Fiscal risks and sustainability is one of its principal publications. Somebody quoting a figure from chart 4.13 is reading a genuine document, and the correction here is about what the chart can carry, not about whether it exists.

On OBR's own central case the line does end positive within a normal lifetime. At the ages a person is likely to reach, the average-wage migrant arriving at 25 is a net contributor in the model. That is why the reading published on this site is a positive number. The claim's direction is defensible on that scenario; its precision and its noun are not.

And migrants do pay charges that nobody disputes. In the financial year 2025-26 the immigration health surcharge raised about £2.3 billion and Home Office visa and immigration fee income about £3.6 billion, both of which are collected before any tax is paid and are counted in nobody's argument about whether the lifetime figure is the one this claim gives or something else. Those are measurements rather than projections, and they are a single year rather than the lifetime the claim is about.

The mirror claim fails too

"Migrants cost the taxpayer over their lifetime" fails on exactly the same chart, and usually by reading it at 100. That endpoint is as arbitrary as any other, and it is the one that produces the most negative number available. Both versions work the same way: take a line whose whole purpose is to show sensitivity, stop it at the age that suits, and quote the height as a fact.

Better questions to ask

• At what age does the figure stop counting? Without that, the number means nothing.
• Whose figure is it? OBR publishes the chart and prints no value from it.
• Which migrant? The line is one modelled person on the average wage with no dependants.
• What happens to a low earner, or someone arriving at 45? Both are in the same analysis and both move the answer a long way.
• Is it a projection or a measurement? Seventy-five years of assumptions is the former.

Source notes

The chart: Office for Budget Responsibility, Fiscal risks and sustainability, September 2024, chart 4.13, corrected 14 November 2024. OBR has published Fiscal risks and sustainability twice since, in July 2025 and July 2026, and neither repeats this analysis, so this is the latest of its kind rather than the latest anyone looked at. The figure this site publishes is read from the chart's own data at age 82 and rounded to the nearest thousand. OBR prints no value from it, which is why the record is graded as an estimate and says so.

The age: OBR's text gives 82 as the life expectancy of an average person in 2028. The choice was made on 3 August 2026 and recorded in the record's own notes, along with the value the same line gives at its peak in the person's sixties and at age 100 where the chart ends, because the age moves the sign as well as the size. Those two readings are the source for every statement above about the shape of the line, and they are in the data layer rather than on this page because nobody publishes them: they are readings, like the one this site publishes, and putting them in prose would give three unpublished numbers the look of three published ones.

The low-earnings and high-earnings cases: the same chart and the same record note. This site has carried them since 27 July 2026 on the page linked above.

Fiscal impact studies: Migration Observatory, The Fiscal Impact of Immigration in the UK. The range is across separate studies of different periods, groups and methods, and is not an uncertainty interval around one estimate.

Health surcharge and fee income: Home Office annual report and accounts. Both are receipts rather than modelled projections.

This page does not offer a better single figure. It has one because the data layer needs a value to cite, and it says which age produced it. A reader who wants one number for the lifetime contribution of the average migrant is asking for something no publisher provides.

All common claims