Below Degree Level: the Temporary Shortage List

For most of the last decade, a job did not have to be especially high-skilled to qualify for sponsorship. The Skilled Worker route sat at RQF level 3 — roughly A-level standard — which let employers sponsor everyone from chefs to care assistants to laboratory technicians. That door has largely closed.

Since 22 July 2025, the baseline rule is that a sponsored Skilled Worker job must sit at RQF level 6 or above, meaning degree level. Thousands of occupations that were eligible the day before stopped being eligible the day after. The exception that keeps a slice of lower-skilled hiring alive is a new, deliberately temporary mechanism: the Temporary Shortage List.

If you work in construction, engineering, a technical trade or a similar mid-skill role and you are trying to work out whether a UK employer can still sponsor you, this is the list that decides it. Here is how it works, who it covers, and why the calendar matters more than almost anything else about it.

What the list actually is

The Temporary Shortage List, or TSL, is a short register of occupations at RQF levels 3 to 5 — below degree level — that can still be sponsored on the Skilled Worker route even though they sit under the new skill threshold. It was introduced alongside the wider reforms that followed the government’s May 2025 immigration White Paper, and it does one narrow job: it buys time for sectors that cannot yet fill their vacancies with resident workers.

The word doing the heavy lifting is temporary. Unlike the old Shortage Occupation List, which ran for years and was a fairly settled feature of the system, the TSL was built with an end date attached. Its current entries are due to lapse on 31 December 2026 unless the government decides to extend them. It is a bridge, not a fixture.

The list is also under active review. The Migration Advisory Committee — the independent body that advises ministers on these questions — was commissioned on 2 July 2025 to examine which occupations genuinely belong on it. Its first-stage report shortlisted dozens of roles for fuller consideration, and its final recommendations are expected around mid-2026. The practical upshot: the list you see today may not be the list that survives into next year, and some occupations on it now could come off.

The salary catch

Here is where a lot of people get caught out. The old shortage lists came with a discount. If your job was on the Shortage Occupation List, and later the Immigration Salary List, you could be paid less than the standard going rate and still qualify. People assumed the Temporary Shortage List would work the same way. It does not.

Being on the TSL gets an occupation back through the skill-level door. It does not cut the salary you have to be paid. The MAC was explicit that there should be no blanket salary discount for TSL roles, and that the thresholds for these occupations should be set at least as high as they are elsewhere on the Skilled Worker route. The cash floor and the occupation’s going rate still apply in full.

There are still the usual ways an individual application can attract a reduced rate — being a new entrant early in your career, for example, or holding a relevant PhD — but those come from your own circumstances, not from the list. The list itself is not a money-off coupon. If you want to check what a particular role needs to pay, our Salary Checker works through the cash floor and going rate for an occupation code.

No family route

The second thing that surprises people is the restriction on dependants. New applicants coming in for an RQF 3 to 5 occupation under these arrangements generally cannot bring partners or children with them. The narrow exception is for those who already hold transitional protection from before 22 July 2025.

This is a significant practical limit. A degree-level Skilled Worker can usually bring their family; someone sponsored into a mid-skill shortage role typically cannot. For anyone weighing up a move, that is not a detail to discover after accepting an offer.

Which jobs are on it

The list leans heavily towards construction, engineering and skilled trades — the sectors where ministers accepted that domestic supply could not close the gap quickly. Welders, electricians, bricklayers, carpenters and a range of technical and operative roles are the kinds of occupations that have featured in the official analysis.

We are deliberately not reproducing a full occupation list here, and you should be wary of any site that presents one as settled. The membership is still being finalised through the MAC’s review, and the only authoritative, current version is the one the Home Office publishes. Check the live list and the matching occupation codes in Appendix Skilled Occupations on gov.uk before you rely on it. If you are not sure which occupation code your job falls under, our explainer on how SOC codes work is a useful starting point.

Care workers are a separate story

Care assistants and senior care workers are the occupations most people ask about, and they sit outside the TSL. The overseas care worker route closed to new applicants from abroad on 22 July 2025, the same day the skill threshold rose. That closure was driven less by labour-market arithmetic than by the scale of exploitation and licence abuse the sector had seen.

There is a transitional path, but a narrow one. Care providers can still assign a Certificate of Sponsorship to someone already in the UK who has been on their payroll for at least three months, and that in-country switching window runs until 22 July 2028. From that date, sponsoring new care workers ends altogether. We cover this in more detail in our health and care worker visa guide.

What it means if you are job hunting

The honest summary for a job seeker is that the room for non-degree sponsorship has shrunk to a defined list with a deadline on it. A few practical points follow from that:

• Confirm the occupation, not the employer. An employer being licensed to sponsor does not mean every role it advertises is sponsorable. For a sub-degree job, the deciding factor is whether the specific occupation is on the current TSL.
• Mind the deadline. With the current entries set to expire at the end of 2026 and the list under review before then, the window for these roles is genuinely short. Timing matters.
• Factor in the family restriction. If bringing dependants is important to you, a TSL role may not be the route you think it is.
• Check the salary properly. There is no shortage discount. The job has to pay the full going rate for its code.

If you are unsure which routes you might qualify for at all, the visa route quiz is a quick way to narrow things down before you go deeper.

What it means for employers

For sponsors, the TSL is best treated as a stopgap rather than a strategy. It lets you keep hiring into a handful of shortage roles while the rules settle, but it was designed to taper off, and the government has been clear that access is tied to sectors showing they are building a domestic pipeline. Planning a workforce around occupations that may drop off the list at the end of 2026 is a risk worth naming out loud.

The dependant restriction also has a recruitment cost. Roles that cannot offer a family route are harder to fill from overseas, which rather undercuts the point of the concession for some employers. None of that makes the list useless. It makes it a short-term tool to be used with open eyes.

The bottom line

The Temporary Shortage List is doing a specific, time-limited job: keeping a narrow set of below-degree occupations sponsorable while the post-White Paper system beds in. It comes with no salary discount, no family route for most new applicants, and a 31 December 2026 expiry hanging over it. The membership is still being decided, so the safest move for anyone relying on it is to check the current official list rather than a second-hand version.

This is general information, not immigration advice, and the rules in this area are moving quickly. Confirm the specifics against the current gov.uk Skilled Worker guidance or take professional advice before making decisions about a job offer or a sponsored role.

Where this comes from: the 2025 immigration White Paper, the Migration Advisory Committee’s Temporary Shortage List Stage 1 report, Appendix Skilled Occupations, and the House of Commons Library briefing on changes after the 2025 White Paper.