New Entrant Skilled Worker Visa: The Salary Discount for Graduates and Under-26s

The standard UK Skilled Worker visa salary threshold is £41,700 per year — or the occupation-specific going rate if it is higher. For many early-career professionals, those numbers make UK employment look out of reach. The New Entrant route is the policy mechanism that changes that calculation, and it is significantly underused because neither applicants nor employers are consistently aware of it.

What the New Entrant Route Is

The New Entrant route is a salary discount built into the Skilled Worker visa's tradeable points framework (Option E under the Immigration Rules). It reduces the required salary to £33,400 per year, or 70% of the occupation-specific going rate — whichever is higher.

The practical effect: an employer does not need to offer a graduate-level salary to sponsor a junior worker. For roles with a going rate below £47,714, the 70% figure produces a threshold below the standard £41,700, making sponsorship financially viable at a junior salary level.

Example: A data analyst role has a going rate of £40,000. Under the standard threshold, the employer needs to pay at least £41,700. Under the New Entrant discount, the minimum drops to £33,400 (70% of £40,000 is £28,000, which is below the £33,400 hard floor, so the floor applies). The employer can sponsor the candidate at £33,400 instead.

For a software developer role with a going rate of £54,700: the standard minimum is £54,700. The New Entrant discount applies at 70% of £54,700 = £38,290. The employer can pay £38,290 instead of £54,700 — a reduction of over £16,000 per year.

Who Qualifies

You qualify for the New Entrant discount if you meet any one of the following criteria at the time you apply:

Under 26 years old: You must be under 26 on the date you submit your Skilled Worker application. Age is assessed at application date, not start date.

Recent UK graduate: You have been awarded a degree-level qualification (bachelor's, master's, or PhD) by a UK university within the five years before your Skilled Worker application, and you are currently in the UK on either a Student or Graduate visa (or you recently held one).

Switching from a Graduate visa: If you are currently in the UK on the Graduate visa and switching to Skilled Worker, you automatically qualify regardless of age. The Graduate visa was created specifically as a bridge route, and the New Entrant discount is the mechanism that makes the salary transition manageable.

Switching from a Student visa to Skilled Worker: If you are switching directly from a Student visa without first taking a Graduate visa, you also qualify.

The Four-Year Cap

This is the most important limitation and the one most applicants discover too late.

The New Entrant discount is available for a cumulative maximum of four years across your entire immigration history in the UK. The clock runs from the date you are first sponsored on the Skilled Worker route using the New Entrant discount, not from when you first arrived in the UK.

If you use the New Entrant discount for a two-year visa and then apply for an extension, you have two more years of discounted threshold available. After the four cumulative years are up, all future applications must meet the standard threshold — £41,700 or the full going rate.

What this means for planning: If you are a graduate switching from a two-year Graduate visa to a three-year Skilled Worker visa using the New Entrant discount, you are consuming three of your four available New Entrant years. You may have only one year of discounted threshold left before you need to be earning the full going rate.

If your career trajectory means your salary will naturally hit the going rate within a few years, this is not a concern. If you are in a field where early-career salaries remain below the going rate for longer, the four-year cap can become a constraint at extension time.

How to Use the New Entrant Route to Persuade Employers

Many UK employers who have the Sponsor Licence infrastructure in place still decline to sponsor junior candidates, citing cost concerns. The New Entrant discount changes the argument.

A large employer sponsoring a standard worker on a five-year visa faces a statutory cost of £7,125 (£525 CoS fee + £6,600 Immigration Skills Charge). This does not change under the New Entrant route. What does change is the salary obligation: the employer can sponsor a New Entrant at a junior market salary rather than needing to pay the full going rate.

For a software developer, the going rate of £54,700 can price out smaller employers even when they want to hire internationally. The New Entrant minimum of £38,290 brings the role into a range that many more employers can viably offer.

The practical approach: if you are a graduate on a Graduate visa approaching expiry, research the going rate for your target SOC code, calculate 70% of that figure, and verify whether any employer you are talking to would be willing to offer at or above that minimum. Then present the New Entrant rules directly — not as a request but as a reference to Home Office policy. Many HR teams simply do not know this mechanism exists.

The Transition Out of New Entrant Status

When the New Entrant discount period ends, your next extension application will be assessed against the standard threshold. If your salary has grown with you naturally, this is not an issue. If it has not, you need to either negotiate a raise before submitting the extension or risk a refusal for not meeting the threshold.

Crucially, transitional salary discounts do not apply at the ILR (settlement) stage. Regardless of which salary discount you used during your leave, your ILR application must show you are meeting the full, undiscounted £41,700 threshold (or the full going rate) at the time you apply to settle.

The UK Skilled Worker Visa Guide includes a New Entrant salary calculator, the email template for presenting the New Entrant rules to employers who are unfamiliar with the discount, and a four-year planning chart to track when you will need to transition to the full threshold.