Do newcomers create more jobs than they take?

MacMickster

I thought that it may be worthwhile exploring the concept, suggested in another thread, that far from taking jobs, newcomers to a community create more jobs within that community.

For the purposes of this thread alone, and to avoid any suggestion of racism or xenophobia, I would like to consider movement within the UK alone.

In that other thread, Hamish was bemoaning the problems faced by employers in Aberdeen due to the exceptionally low unemployment rate. As a consequence he was unable to recruit unskilled staff (cleaners) even when offering 10 pounds per hour.

This got me thinking that if the initial concept of newcomers to a community creating even more jobs held water, then this presented all sorts of potential problems for communities throughout the UK.

Say a young chap in an unemployment blackspot such as Burnley heard of the availability of these unskilled jobs in Aberdeen, and following the sage advice of Norman Tebbit decided to get on his bike and move to where those jobs were. Far from helping to solve the shortage of employees in Aberdeen, he would actually exacerbate it, as by moving there and taking that single job he would actually create more jobs. This may be why those crafty Aberdonians don't seem to advertise these highly paid cleaning jobs on the internet, so that they avoid the influxof people from Burnley.

I also considered the impact that someone moving from Burnley would have on unemployment there. Now if when someone moves to a community they create more than 1 job just by doing so, then the reverse must be true also. Consequently, jobs are lost in Burnley due to the young chap moving away, making the unemployment situation even worse.

It seems like a lose-lose outcome for both Burnley and Aberdeen, but surely I must be wrong about that. No doubt someone will be able to correct me in due course.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

MacMickster wrote: »

I thought that it may be worthwhile exploring the concept, suggested in another thread, that far from taking jobs, newcomers to a community create more jobs within that community.

If the population of an island doubles from 1 million to 2 million, will that island not need pretty much twice as many doctors, lawyers, taxi drivers, shopkeepers, publicans, etc as it does now?

Or do you think that the same number of jobs exist today in Britain as did 100 years ago or whatever when the population was half as many?

And if some of those people then bring capital with them and use it to open businesses servicing other nearby islands, employment may grow beyond what just the island can support purely for it's own consumption.

homelessskilledworker

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

If the population of an island doubles from 1 million to 2 million, will that island not need pretty much twice as many doctors, lawyers, taxi drivers, shopkeepers, publicans, etc as it does now?

Or do you think that the same number of jobs exist today in Britain as did 100 years ago or whatever when the population was half as many?

And if some of those people then bring capital with them and use it to open businesses servicing other nearby islands, employment may grow beyond what just the island can support purely for it's own consumption.

SO I WILL ASK YOU FOR ABOUT THE 10TH TIME;)

How big a population do you find exceptable, 70 million, 100 million, 200 million, 300 million or even greater.

Come on Hamish, enlighten us.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

homelessskilledworker wrote: »

How big a population do you find exceptable,

Well 70 million is locked in already. I suspect it'll peak somewhere over 100 million, but that will take many, many decades.

Which gives us plenty of time to adjust the birthrate and ensure a sustainable situation with the dependency ratio moving forwards from there.

CLAPTON

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

Well 70 million is locked in already. I suspect it'll peak somewhere over 100 million, but that will take many, many decades.

Which gives us plenty of time to adjust the birthrate and ensure a sustainable situation with the dependency ratio moving forwards from there.

what exactly do you mean 'adjust the birthrate and ensure sustainable situation etc?

does that entail killing off the old or forcing the young to produce or not to produce?

what mechanisms do you favour?

the current population is totally sustainable

what dependancy ratio do you consider sustainable ; noting of course unless the birthrate = death rate then either the population grows or reduces?

grizzly1911

MacMickster wrote: »

I thought that it may be worthwhile exploring the concept, suggested in another thread, that far from taking jobs, newcomers to a community create more jobs within that community.

For the purposes of this thread alone, and to avoid any suggestion of racism or xenophobia, I would like to consider movement within the UK alone.

In that other thread, Hamish was bemoaning the problems faced by employers in Aberdeen due to the exceptionally low unemployment rate. As a consequence he was unable to recruit unskilled staff (cleaners) even when offering 10 pounds per hour.

This got me thinking that if the initial concept of newcomers to a community creating even more jobs held water, then this presented all sorts of potential problems for communities throughout the UK.

Say a young chap in an unemployment blackspot such as Burnley heard of the availability of these unskilled jobs in Aberdeen, and following the sage advice of Norman Tebbit decided to get on his bike and move to where those jobs were. Far from helping to solve the shortage of employees in Aberdeen, he would actually exacerbate it, as by moving there and taking that single job he would actually create more jobs. This may be why those crafty Aberdonians don't seem to advertise these highly paid cleaning jobs on the internet, so that they avoid the influxof people from Burnley.

I also considered the impact that someone moving from Burnley would have on unemployment there. Now if when someone moves to a community they create more than 1 job just by doing so, then the reverse must be true also. Consequently, jobs are lost in Burnley due to the young chap moving away, making the unemployment situation even worse.

It seems like a lose-lose outcome for both Burnley and Aberdeen, but surely I must be wrong about that. No doubt someone will be able to correct me in due course.

Thought you a dutch boys had learned your lesson? Look what happened last time.:eek:

MacMickster

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

If the population of an island doubles from 1 million to 2 million, will that island not need pretty much twice as many doctors, lawyers, taxi drivers, shopkeepers, publicans, etc as it does now?

Almost certainly not. Unless those in place are operating at capacity then the a good percentage of the extra services required will continue to be provided by the current businesses as they stand.

Most publicans that I know, for example, could see custom double without having to take on many (if any) extra staff. They certainly wouldn't double their staff. The concept of requiring proportionately less staff to cope with a larger customer base is often referred to as economy of scale. You may have heard of it.

kabayiri

Lots of things can create jobs. Internal demand is one.

Another is innovation, developing new products which create a market which previously didn't exist.

New drugs; things like iPad; new business models like Amazon and Google which aim for global reach. These things create high quality jobs, if not mass employment.

Hamish's vision of the future lacks ambition.

robmatic

kabayiri wrote: »

Lots of things can create jobs. Internal demand is one.

Another is innovation, developing new products which create a market which previously didn't exist.

New drugs; things like iPad; new business models like Amazon and Google which aim for global reach. These things create high quality jobs, if not mass employment.

Hamish's vision of the future lacks ambition.

Meanwhile, in Britain we seem to aspire towards an economy in which the majority of people are employed by the state, all of the people receive benefits from the state and the only wealth-generating activity people are interested in involves selling houses to each other at ever-inflating prices.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

MacMickster wrote: »

Almost certainly not. Unless those in place are operating at capacity then the a good percentage of the extra services required will continue to be provided by the current businesses as they stand.

Except of course, that any overcapacity within the economy tends to be temporary in nature, as without population growth eventually that overcapacity will be rationalised out of existence.

Detroit, for example, has closed endless libraries, restaurants, manufacturing plants, schools, police stations, etc as population has fallen.

Most publicans that I know, for example, could see custom double without having to take on many (if any) extra staff. They certainly wouldn't double their staff.

Then their businesses are already overstaffed and running inefficiently.

Or the pubs market has not yet finished rationalising to the new, healthy, post-smoking-ban world, and many more will yet close.

But that doesn't change the fact that in general, an economy of 2 million people requires twice as many jobs as an economy of one million people.

Otherwise, we'd have half our working age adults unemployed now, given that population has doubled in the last 100 years.

The concept of requiring proportionately less staff to cope with a larger customer base is often referred to as economy of scale. You may have heard of it.

I certainly have.

And to contrast, many businesses only become viable above a certain demographic threshold, and many more are a requirement of geography rather than demography. So an increase in urban areas will often require significantly more branches to supply the same product.

kabayiri

robmatic wrote: »

Meanwhile, in Britain we seem to aspire towards an economy in which the majority of people are employed by the state, all of the people receive benefits from the state and the only wealth-generating activity people are interested in involves selling houses to each other at ever-inflating prices.

Some £800m was allocated in a fund to get people back into work through a set of private providers which are really quasi-state entities. That's an expensive consequence of not having a belief in training our young, preferring instead to import cheaper labour. The irony is of course that these back to work service offerings will add to GDP.

Meanwhile the UK games industry struggles to attract a few 10s of million, and there is a steady attrition of high quality games development jobs to Canada and elsewhere.

We will end up as a nation of Estate Agents and shoe shop owners, as you suggest.