Nigerians and Indians have filled more new jobs in the past five years than ­British nationals, new government figures suggest.

The UK economy has created almost 1.5 million new roles since before the pandemic. Data from HM Revenue and Customs suggests most posts have been filled by workers from outside the ­European Union.

Since 2019 there has been an increase of 488,000 jobs being filled by Indian workers and 279,000 roles being taken by people from Nigeria. Over the same period UK citizens have taken up 257,000 new jobs.

Observers said the figures suggested that non-EU migrants had taken the place of European workers as a result of immigration reforms after Brexit.

The figures showed that people from the EU held 242,000 fewer positions over