Local jobs for low-skilled workers
Nigel Williams, 10 July 2014
So much depends upon your point of view. Following the Migration Advisory Committee’s report in July 2014, headlines covered the entire spectrum.
- ‘Report blows away major claims of the anti-immigration lobby’ (Left Foot Forward.)
- ‘EU migrants “not hitting UK school-leavers”job prospects’ (The Guardian)
- ‘Migrants DO take our jobs: Britons losing out to foreign workers’ (Daily Express)
- ‘Britain “struggling to cope” with immigration, says official report’ (Daily Telegraph)
- ‘EU migrants add £22bn to UK finances’ (Financial Times)
- ‘Low-skilled workers ‘at risk of exploitation’ (BBC)
- ‘Mass immigration to parts of Britain HAS driven down wages of the poor and put pressure on services, official report finds’ (Daily Mail)
- ‘Migrants win 1m jobs with can-do attitude’ (The Times)
There are also stories picking up on particular consequences:
- ‘Immigration damages house prices, say Home Office advisers’ (Daily Telegraph)
- ‘Schools “fuel migration by failing less able children”‘ (Evening Standard)
- ‘How budget cuts may drive migration’ (Local Government Chronicle)
Making sense of this variety will take more than a single blog. In adjudicating between the different points of view, there is little substitute for looking critically at the evidence and deciding for oneself. Commentators can only hope to provide guidance and place the evidence before their expected conclusions.
Happily, the report does refer to three Civitas publications in its assessment of the claim that one category of migrant has brought a £22 billion benefit, as picked up by the FT. At the time that claim was first made, I remarked on the curiosity that transport of all things should be assumed to be ‘non-congestible’, supposing that a growing population required no extra investment. The MAC (paragraph 8.44) appears to have misread that section, since they give transport as their example of the opposite ‘congestible’ category. That matches people’s experience but not the Dustmann and Frattini report whose conclusion they repeat.
The MAC report highlights local variation. Looking at employment patterns, they choose a sensible comparison (Figure 7.1) to set labour-market indicators against proportions of migrants in low-skilled jobs. In the graph below, I have reproduced their data on a different scale and added best-fit lines. Although all the correlations are in the directions that suggests high migration may damage the labour market, the lines are undeniably shallow, meaning that the average effects are not great.
A more precise graph below looks at the steepest line, showing, for each authority, the proportions of migrants in low-skilled jobs and of unemployment. The dots sit a long way from the best-fit line, meaning that migration cannot be ruled out as a contributing factor but is far from being the only cause. The difference between Newham and Woking might be expected, but some other difference is needed to explain why Birmingham and Leicester should have much higher unemployment than Hounslow and Merton.
Other claims also require careful thought. For example, the claim that, at the low-skilled end of the housing market, mass migration should be lowering prices appears counter-intuitive. At the top end, Civitas has found evidence that purchasers from overseas are inflating the bubble. The MAC found a report to say high house prices are negatively associated with new immigration. Although a far more obvious link is that migrants will be drawn towards areas with affordable accommodation, Filipa Sá’s discussion paper from 2011 does indeed offer the explanation of a fall in demand caused by locals moving out.
There is a wealth of material in the report that should not be obscured by arguments over the details. Suggestions about portability of entitlements to social housing and proper enforcement of the minimum wage have the potential to benefit more than just migrant workers.