More than 500 are still outstanding – while so far this year just nine have been refused.
A breakdown of long-term employment permit submissions up to 22 October showed that 1,000 applications were made. Of those, 419 were approved and only nine rejected, with a 27 withdrawn.
The remaining 545 – almost 55% of the total – were still awaiting a decision at that point.
The figures also reveal which industries rely most heavily on bringing in off-island staff.
Health and social care dominates, accounting for more than a quarter of the total applications – of which 131 have been approved and 126 are still awaiting a decision. Hospitality is the next largest, with 178 applications, 64 of them approved and 105 outstanding, while accountancy accounts for 160, with 60 approved and 94 awaiting a decision.
Between them, those three sectors make up more than 600 of the island’s 1,000 applications.
The wider finance industry also features throughout, including fund services, fiduciary and trust work, banking, insurance and legal services.
There were smaller numbers in construction, education, digital development and horticulture.
The backlog is concentrated in the biggest sectors, with health and social care, hospitality and accountancy alone accounting for more than 300 of the 545 applications still awaiting a decision.
What rejections there were came from only a handful of sectors. Hospitality accounted for four of the nine refusals, with the others spread across retail and a small number of other areas.
The figures chime with recent warnings from employers, particularly in sectors such as tourism and hospitality, that they are struggling to recruit, and with the Committee for Home Affairs acknowledging that the office has been in a mess and that processing delays have hampered the ability of businesses to plan.
The committee recently extended some short-term permits to give employers more certainty while it works to stabilise the Population Management Office and then carries out a wider review of population policy.
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