The first thing to do in any discussion about the impact of migration on employment is to disregard MigrationWatch. It brought out a report on Monday noting the correlation between youth unemployment and immigration (finding that, between 2004 and 2011, unemployment among the young had risen from 575,000 to over a million, while 600,000 eastern Europeans had entered the labour force). Matt Cavanagh from the Institute for Public Policy Research took this apart immediately – and if you think that was quick work, bear in mind that MigrationWatch has brought out this report before, 18 months ago, and the flaws in it have already been uncovered. It's reheating material that has already been discredited in the hope that the crisis of youth unemployment will leave us clutching at any explanation. Next it will blame Spanish bluebells, and grey squirrels, and witches.
But on Tuesday two reports came out from more reputable institutions, the Migration Advisory Committee and the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, with different findings. NIESR found no correlation between immigration and unemployment, while the advisory committee found no correlation within the EU, but that for every 100 non-EU migrants, 23 jobs were lost to the indigent population: therefore, the 2.1 million migrants entering the UK between 1995 and 2010 had displaced 160,000 British workers.
The reason for these apparently opposite conclusions is in part due to their different methodologies (explained by Jonathan Portes, head of NIESR, in his blog) and in part to the fact that the committee's conclusions were not as trenchant as the immigration minister, Damian Green, chose to believe when he remarked: "This report makes clear that [immigration] can put pressure on the local labour market." It isn't all that clear – the report is actually quite tentative.
So of course I have a strong leftie twitch going that says NIESR is probably right. Precisely because the anti-immigration lobby overstates its impact on employment so regularly, a study finding no impact has the ring of likelihood. And yet just because we have conflicting results for employment it doesn't mean we have no evidence on what immigration does to the economy.
There are plenty of studies on what net migration does – overall, it boosts gross domestic product. Scott Blinder from the Migration Observatory points out: "You're adding people and they will always have some output, so it's inevitable that you're adding some productivity." What that shows is that GDP is a pretty blunt tool with which to carve any kind of policy. But it also boosts GDP per capita – however, it's "not necessarily good for the GDP per capita for the people who were already here".
If you want to look at the country en masse, immigration is an economic good. GDP goes up, there's not a strong link between immigration and unemployment, and there's not a huge impact on median wages, some studies show a slight positive, some a slight negative. So if you're asking what's "best for Britain", in the politician's parlance, that's your answer. However, the reason median earnings don't change much is because higher earners are benefiting and lower earners are losing out.
You can't really look at the effects of immigration without breaking Britain up into constituencies – high earners, employers, median earners, low earners, unskilled workers. And here it becomes not only complex but more political than economic. Martin Ruhs, also from the Migration Observatory, says: "Some studies conclude that most of the adverse impact of immigration is on migrants who are already here. Which you'd expect, since that's the group most similar to the migrants, so they're competing for the same jobs."
It's ironic that this has led some on the left to conclude that immigration therefore doesn't matter, because you're firing Peter to employ Paul. Someone living here for 30 years would disagree pretty strenuously with that. But maybe that's a subtlety too far, so let's say for the sake of argument that you have set all migrants aside and want to devise policy with the best possible outcome for British workers. Limiting immigration, where it has an outcome, is good for the lowest paid and bad for the highest – and that's great, but it's also quite incongruous from this government, and it's not very clearly articulated.
If a government did say clearly that it was looking to improve the lot of the low-skilled, low-paid British worker, that would open a discussion about whether or not migration caps were the best way to go about it. I think they're circuitous: if you look at migration sectorially, two huge importers of manpower are healthcare and social care, where wages have been driven down in part by the contracting-out of local authority services. Migrants who come in on family or student visas will typically work longer hours for less money because they're not entitled to benefits (the same reason they'll take high-risk black market work; the same reason EU workers are not found to depress British employment prospects, because of benefit entitlements).
Now this isn't really an argument against migration or against benefits; it's an argument for fairer wage settlements and a higher minimum wage. It's an argument against involving the private sector in public duties, because what they call "efficiency" any sensible person would call "forcing down wages".
So, sure, bring down net migration if you want to, but don't expect that to be the answer. If it is, you're not being straight about the question.
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11 January 2012 8:33PM
Sadly, I don't think your article will receive much beyond vitriol. Economics is simply the latest fig leaf under which the same old 'no blacks, dogs or Irish' doggerel takes place, the irony being that the people who peddle this line wouldn't otherwise give a damn about the 'poor, hard-done by' white working class.
11 January 2012 8:35PM
good nuanced article on a highly emotive issue
i can only speak for myself but in the service industries i use give me an articulate, pleasant & professional worker from anywhere in place of some of my own home grown sulky & lethargic fellow citizens with a sense of entitlement appallingly out of proportion to their actual talent.
i don't blame that on immigration but the the failure of education & social welfare
of our politicians in the last thirty years,
11 January 2012 8:36PM
"the Institute for Public Policy Research took this apart immediately"
You mean the IPPR that spend 13 years under Labour pumping out 'research' that said there was no link between immigration and British unemployment?
"while the advisory committee found no correlation within the EU"
The committee didn't consider EU immigration, only non-EU. Check the report, did you read it? I assume you know that the MAC report was commissioned to “research the labour market, social and public service impacts of non-EEA migration?"
"But it also boosts GDP per capita"
It actually lowers GDP per capita, people on average earn less as a result of immigration.
"there's not a strong link between immigration and unemployment"
The link is real as MAC show but your problem is how to say "It only affects poor people so thats fine by me!" without sounding like a Tory.
"EU workers are not found to depress British employment prospects"
Prey tell who found that because it seems to be a conclusion you arrived at by yourself.
And I could go on picking out lies, distortions and misunderstandings.
11 January 2012 8:39PM
The encouragement of migrant workers to these shores is nothing new it was done in the 50's and 60's but justified as bringing in west indians to do the jobs that white British workers wouldnt do. The same excuse has been used for the past decade, the reality is that it is a method to undermine the pay structures in this country which are unfair and only serve to make the rich richer, which was an issue through the 19 hundreds forcing miners to work for fresh air for fear of being shot. So here we are again due to the presence of migrant workers working for peanuts that they perceive to be a fortune until they have their families here and find out the contrary, they then swell the ranks of the unemployed.
The trouble with this exploitative and punitive method is it lacks incentive,pay realistic workers wage, they are happy, spend all their money, boost the economy.
11 January 2012 8:40PM
Personally speaking, I'm more concerned with the strain that immigrants put on local services, many of which are already stretched to breaking point.
11 January 2012 8:42PM
For most people the question is why we should be made an ethnic minority in our own country. To respond to Alexander, the people who "peddle this line" often are the white working class, which just goes to show how much of a damn you give about them.
To suggest that having a sensible immigration system which respects the native population, and treats Britain as a country rather than a corporation, would mean "no dogs or Irish" is just fatuous.
11 January 2012 8:45PM
I suppose that's the irony I want to underline, though: the coalition is resolute in not taking any policy initiatives to protect the poorest, except for this one.
11 January 2012 8:45PM
The people who are already here are in competition with the incomers for housing.
Just look carefully at the graph in this article.
Over the years the annual population increase gets bigger and bigger and we build fewer and fewer houses. Any marginal increase in GDP disappears as housing costs.
1970
Population increased by 180 000
Number of new houses 370 000
1982
Population increased by 0
Number of new houses 180 000
2000
Population increased by 180 000
Number of new houses 180 000
2010
Population increased by 440 000
Number of new houses 110 000
11 January 2012 8:46PM
The starting point for any discussion must be to note that under the Blair Broon years the best part of a million non EU immigrants were added to the workforce. This policy was never publicly discussed and received no mandate either via election maifesto or vote in the Houses of Parliament.
11 January 2012 8:47PM
Then what are the other 77 doing? plus it ignores the EU migrants.
11 January 2012 8:47PM
And the irony is that the very poorest tend to be recent immigrants themselves.
11 January 2012 8:51PM
In my experience, this is pretty typical of the effect of migrants on low paid work. It has made it casual/zero hour.
http://liberalconspiracy.org/2010/05/15/the-unfairness-of-ed-miliband/#comment-133052
11 January 2012 8:53PM
It is always either
"They steal our jobs", or
"They sit on benefits". Some people even say both in the same breath.
I really don't give a damn who precisely does a job, i only care that the person does it well. And that the best person is doing it.
And the education system in this country is lacking when it comes to jobs that require manual skills.....but not lacking in other countries. As long as there is so much focus on academic education, and so few jobs that require manual labour what with either computers or people in other countries doing them for a pittance, the competition for these jobs is going to be fierce, the best will win, and the best are those who were taught well.
Also, people who manage to make it to another country to try for a better life are usually a step up in any so- called class system in their own countries. Lots of migrant workers here are underemployed, but ironically better off because of how relatively strong the pound is. Or was, ahem.
11 January 2012 8:54PM
I do wonder how you balance constant net immigration with a fixed amount of land.
You'll have to bring population changes to a net of zero or less at some point.
I'd argue that the fact we're suffering significant unemployment, housing shortages and infrastructure barely coping, that now is a very good time to bring net migration to roughly zero, at least in the short-medium time-frame...
Surely capping immigration levels to match emigration levels isn't THAT hard to organise?
11 January 2012 8:56PM
Well this is an interesting article. Interesting in that if critical levels of youth unemployment over the last decade cannot be blamed on mass immigration then it can only be blamed on catastrophic and persistent policy failures by labour.Either way it suggests that the left has nothing of interest to anyone to say on the matter.
But then those of us who occasionally read Zoe Williams' articles know all this already....
11 January 2012 8:59PM
Or, take back the vast tracks of land owned by the so- called gentry based on centuries- old feudal laws that bear no relation to modernity, and start spreading towns and cities out a bit more.
11 January 2012 8:59PM
Immigration drives up GDP, enough evidence for that. But low skilled immigration hugely benefits employers, hugely depresses wages for unkilled labor. Wouldn't it be interesting to research whether we can establish a causal link or at least a correlation between rising immigration and rising inequality?
11 January 2012 9:00PM
Unskilled, not unkilled. Doh
11 January 2012 9:02PM
The first thing to do in any discussion about the impact of migration on employment is to disregard The Guardian.
This newspaper bangs on about "inequality" a lot. Yet it doesn't take an economist and their useless "correlations" to work out that increasing the supply of a commodity drives down the price ...whether that be labour or anything else.
Because they have a huge influx of bargain-basement overseas labour to choose from, employers can pay their staff ever less, and themselves ever more. They are ably abetted by The Guardian, which is fond of labelling anyone who points this out a "racist". It thereby does more than pretty much any other publication to increase inequality.
11 January 2012 9:03PM
immigration has been used as wage control for working class people,labour used immigration as a weapon and the tories will do nothing but make the situation worse
11 January 2012 9:03PM
Nah mate, making reading the Guardian compulsery should do nicely
11 January 2012 9:04PM
I worked in a warehouse in Barking. When I started working there it was mostly staffed by British Nationals (of all colours, mainly of an Asian background). By the time they made me redundant, along with over 50 of my friends, it was almost entirely staffed by Eastern Europeans whom are employed on a temporary basis.
I’m now claiming JSA. I suspect that many of my former colleagues will never work again as a lot of them were more mature than me and I suspect that this was a key factor in the redundancy. I see a clear correlation between immigration and my unemployment.
This is why there can never be any sensible debate on the subject. People from either side come out with conflicting stats.
11 January 2012 9:05PM
The majority isn't always right. White Britons make up about 90% of the population. When you add in other British ethnic groups that figure gets higher. There is virtually no prospect of Brits becoming an ethnic minority here.
11 January 2012 9:07PM
"Reduce net migration if you must, but don't expect it to improve the lot of the lowest skilled and lowest paid".....
Whilst having completely shit social and educational policies.
The heart of the problem.
Style of thing
11 January 2012 9:07PM
- do you mean to discredit the IPPR as a research body by putting "research" in inverted commas? I mean, it's bold alright, but it doesn't really amount to a criticism.
- The committee did consider EU migration: this is their own precis of their work: "We find no association between working-age migrants and native employment: (i) in buoyant economic times; (ii) for EU migrants; (iii) for the period 1975-1994. By contrast, we find a negative association between working-age migrants and native employment: (i) in depressed economic times; (ii) for non-EU migrants; (iii) for the period 1995-2010." http://www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk/sitecontent/documents/aboutus/workingwithus/mac/27-analysis-migration/01-analysis-report/analysis-of-the-impacts?view=Binary
- That point is not true. GDP per capita is boosted, it just isn't boosted equally across the board and some people do lose. You can find those figures on the Migration Observatory website.
- Under no circumstances do I think it's "fine with me".
- re EU workers and British employment, I refer you back to that precis of the MAC report.
- You can go on picking if you like, but I strongly suspect that these were your strongest points, and not one of them has any basis in fact.
Even if any of your points were correct, you still wouldn't be adhering to the basic standard of human courtesty that we try to observe on this thread. I don't think you come BTL on my pieces very often, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. But in the future, it might help you to imagine that you're in a meeting with another person, and then try to imagine speaking to that person in a civilised way.
11 January 2012 9:09PM
Trenchant would be: "... immigration
put pressure... ", but he said "can" which exactly isn't trenchant.
11 January 2012 9:09PM
The number of jobs in the economy isn't fixed. They were taking jobs that wouldn't have otherwise have been taken/created in the same way as other new entrants to the economy (i.e. young adults finding their first job).
11 January 2012 9:11PM
Well... sure, there's more pressure on local services than if there were 2.1 million fewer people altogether. But, especially with EU migration, people tend to arrive when they're over-18 and leave well before they retire. So they actually put as little pressure on local services as it's possible to imagine.
11 January 2012 9:13PM
I'm as unconvinced by IPPR as by MigrationWatch. Each has a position which it seeks to support with whatever 'evidence' it can dig up.
11 January 2012 9:13PM
I agree that housing is a huge issue: however, no serious economist has ever suggested that curbing migration would get anywhere near the heart of that. Everybody says, build more houses.
11 January 2012 9:13PM
Those who contribute regularly to CIF will be aware that immigration is raised very frequently by posters. The consistent theme is that immigration is always presented as a major problem. In every case, the argument can be seen to be an absolute red herring.
Unfortunately, those who persist in blaming immigration - sorry, 'mass immigration' - for the country's ills can be seen to have something of an agenda.
I'm afraid that this agenda is simple racism.
The obsession with immigration is of course by no means unique to CIF. If you can pluck up the courage to peruse the Telegraph's strident and poorly-moderated message boards, you will find those prepared to denounce 'mass immigration' in terms rather less guarded than will be the case here.
11 January 2012 9:13PM
Wrong century I'm afraid.
the 'landed gentry' are now a largely mythical and historical footnote and I'm not sure that destroying our agricultural base to build city blocks would make us anything but poorer.
11 January 2012 9:14PM
Do you have any citations to back those assertions?
11 January 2012 9:14PM
You could build all the towns you like in the North of the UK but the population still gravitates to the SE and in particular London.
11 January 2012 9:14PM
Good point. But the left who carp on about protecting the poorest are not taking any policy initiatives when it comes to immigration. They are very unwilling to even admit that the working class has had a raw deal from immigration.
11 January 2012 9:15PM
Last year 25% of all children born in London were born to mothers who were born outside the UK.
There's corresponding pressure on maternity services and shortage of primary-school places.
11 January 2012 9:15PM
yes, you're right. sorry.
11 January 2012 9:16PM
Given that my local council has to translate everything into countless languages and employ translators to speak to immigrants I'd beg to differ. Don't get me started on parents having to send their children to schools several miles away due to a large numbers of immigrants having moved into the area!
11 January 2012 9:17PM
What is your basis for believing this. I did not see it in the conclusions and surely the sample rate is too low to judge.
Or did I miss something?
11 January 2012 9:17PM
Yep, good article. Best yet on the argument that statistical averages, tell us nothing about the extremes.
The issue seems more - as others said - about discontent.
Also: an important aspect of life is the people you must rub along with: your local community, your neighbour. I can't think of anywhere, any time, when humans have been pleased, at a large influx of strangers to their neighbourhood. Looked forward to that. Can you? Age old human trait.
Most people have an opinion; many would like a say. But these days, politicians control that over our heads. Via offering jobs, setting migration quotas.
That's what's resented, the seizing of control, over who gets to live among us.
11 January 2012 9:19PM
Might that be more down to the fact that government is too short-sighted to prepare in advance? That's the other thing about immigration - you can blame it for anything.
11 January 2012 9:19PM
Immigration does not benefit the economy it certainly damages public finances and turns the nation into an overcrowded divided hell hole.
It also destroys britons' ownership of their nation. Possession is nine tenths of the law and all that. If we are not the overwhelming makority then it is no longer our country.
Mass immigration is a evil undemocratic conspiracy.
It almost makes me want to divorce the indian mrs. I do not want to contribute to our downfall.
ps. the building trade has been destroyed by immigration.
11 January 2012 9:21PM
Erm, no. GDP per capita is only boosted if newcomers as a whole have an average income level higher than the prevailing rate and if this isn't offset by a corresponding decline in the income levels of incumbents (whether native Brits or recent immigrants). Do you think either condition is the case in practice?
11 January 2012 9:21PM
But we didn't, and aren't, building more houses with the consequences we can all see. And sooner or later we have to stabilise the size of the population. Why do you think we are building HS2? It's not because we need to save thirty minutes on the journey, it's because we have a railway network built when we had half the population and it's full.
How about building all the houses and schools we need and then inviting in as many people as we feel can fill the spare ones?
11 January 2012 9:22PM
They don't have kids and they don't get ill.
These people are supermen.
11 January 2012 9:23PM
Further - last example , was WWII, people evacuated from cities, billetted on country areas.
The folk evacuated, had direst need; they spoke English; and were of the same culture as the communities they moved to.
But the folk they were billeted on, many resented them; few looked forward to arrivals with pleasure. I gather.
Presumably what they resented - government appropriation of a basic human choice; whom to live with.
11 January 2012 9:24PM
Economic arguments are not the only angle for a cut in immigration. There seems to be a growing consensus amongst much of the population which feels uncomfortable with the huge demographic changes that are occurring in their communities and are willing to accept some negative economic trends to halt these changes which are often far from socially positive for them. This is particularly true for various working class communities, who are most affected in terms of social change and economic competition.
For people that feel their communities have become fragmented care little for economic statistical arguments from governments, think tanks or the media about whether immigration benefits the economy by certain percentage or any other such other ethereal facts. All you know is that it was hard enough to get a decent job at any time but also now the street or neighbourhood you grew up in demographically has nothing in common with you and is completely alien to your way of life. The rise of the far right in Europe the FN in France and Geert Wilders PVV in Holland, as well as the growth of the EDL in the UK is not just about economic competition, it is also about race, religion and culture. These issues have been studiously ignored by liberal European governments and the media for decades, to the point, where in Europe at least racist political parties are beginning to have real clout.
As such I don't believe Zoe Williams is being straight about the questions of immigration either or maybe she does not understand the issues that are talked about in the pubs and front rooms of many ordinary people.
11 January 2012 9:27PM
Sorry but this argument just wont fly.
Its not the fault of immigrants as such -why on earth would they not want to improve ther prospects in life - but its inevitable that alloweing lage numbers of unskilled foreign workers who will work for a pittance is going to drve down wages. I fail to see how this can be argued against.
Yes we wil get the usual bullshit from employers about "lazy" British workers, but this si simply a smomkescreeen for exploitation and drivinfg down costs.
Ordinary British people have a right to expect to be first in the queue for jobs and benefits in their own country.Immigrants come in to fill a need - not to provide cheap labour for the rich or a new burgeoning servant class for Guardianistas. If there si no real need immigratins shodul be reduced.
This would be uncontroversial in any other western country
11 January 2012 9:27PM
People like the minimum wage as a solution because it's so easy. With the stroke of a pen, the government can raise or lower it. "Job done" they say "The low-paid are now protected."
But the greatest evil for low-paid, unskilled workers these says are dodgy employment practices like zero-hour contract and never-ending temporary contracts. When I was a lad, factory workers had forty hours of work guaranteed every week, and as a result, they knew how much they would be getting. These days a lot of people just have to wait for the employer to phone them up and ask them to come in for a few hours. They might work 40 hours one week, 10 hours the next, and nothing the week after. The highest possible minimum wage is no good if you're working zero hours. Dealing with that is a lot more difficult for the government than just increasing the minimum wage by 50p an hour, but it needs to be tackled.
11 January 2012 9:28PM
The number of jobs in the economy isn't fixed. They were taking jobs that wouldn't have otherwise have been taken/created in the same way as other new entrants to the economy (i.e. young adults finding their first job).
About as credible as the source you quote.
When there are not enough jobs to go round, you do not import workers. Or if you do, you have to be happy about supporting those displaced.