Perception vs Reality

CLAPTON

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

Clearly we do in some areas today, even with immigration.

We would on a much wider basis without immigration.

And this would only get worse as the population ages and the population of working age people declined.

7

there is no evidence that we have any shortage of labour at the moment: if in the future we do then it makes sense to recruit




in fact, there is a forum idiot that constantly posts that every immigrant creates one extra job, and that 'native' employment is totally unchanged by new arrivals

this clearly shows that immigrants don't fill existing vacancies as that would decrease employment of the native peoples

dktreesea

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

How does having a few hundred thousand unemployed native Brits in the North of England solve my problem?

The fact is that the native born population cannot be bothered to move to where the work is.

Immigrants, by definition, can.

For whatever reason, many Brits feel entitled to sit at home watching TV and claiming benefits while immigrants just get on with it and get a job.

Solve that problem first, and the population problem, and the medical advances for aged people problem, and the deficit projection under low migration scenario problem, and then come and say we don't need immigration....

Until then, you're making the equivalent argument to cutting off our own legs now in the hope that one day bionic legs might be invented and might be better and might be affordable....

It's probably more that the native born population have strong ties to the area they grew up in and don't want to leave behind family and friends, - which to me is understandable - whereas the immigrants all did that once they crossed their own borders.

I do notice a different mindset, including amongst self employed people in the circles I travel in, when it comes to chasing work and building wealth, between those entitled to benefits and those without. It's like we live in two different societies, both operating in the same space.

People who don't get any benefits seem obsessed about providing for their retirement, even when it's over 30 years away. And they are focused on building their income and how to invest what they can save.Thinking about not just how much their house is going up in value day by day (it does feel odd when the house appreciates by more than the people in it earn each day) but how best to get their mitts on that equity and invest it.

People who do well out of the benefits system seem to be more concerned with how to protect their unearned income stream. So they don't maximise their chances of getting work elsewhere, e.g. by applying, because they are worried that if they do so and get the job, in, say, NE Scotland, they won't be able to afford to live while they wait for their first payday. Hopefully UC will avoid that particular transition concern, since their benefits would presumably continue until they had received their first pay and declared it at the month end. But they sometimes have different concenrns, e.g. things like not working an extra day a week at the market because they don't want to go over the income threshold for any or all of WTC/Child tax credit/HB, i.e. whichever benefit(s) they happen to be getting.

I really notice the difference in attitudes when it comes to children. The people who are not in the system say "Can I afford another child? How will I pay for it?" The ones hooked into the benefits system (and I am only talking about people who are working or genuinely want to work, not those who don't want to be part of the working world) ask instead "Can I afford, given what the government will pay me, not to have another child?"

Two completely different working worlds.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

dktreesea wrote: »

It's probably more that the native born population have strong ties to the area they grew up in and don't want to leave behind family and friends, - which to me is understandable - whereas the immigrants all did that once they crossed their own borders.

But the jobs available today will not necessarily be where the jobs of yesterday were.

And we as a society cannot afford to pay people to sit in areas of high unemployment and collect benefits when the jobs may never return there.

Nor can most people in areas of low unemployment afford to have runaway local inflation in goods and services because employers are having to pay over the odds, because much of the labour force can't be ar5ed moving....

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

CLAPTON wrote: »

in fact, there is a forum idiot that constantly posts that every immigrant creates one extra job, and that 'native' employment is totally unchanged by new arrivals

Yes, damn those forum idiots..... And the economists at NIESR who researched the data to prove it... And the broadsheets that reported it.....

It's clearly all a big idiotic conspiracy.

There is no link between rising immigration and rising unemployment, independent economists have found – contradicting persistent claims from anti-immigration activists and politicians that an influx of foreign nationals into the UK in recent years has led to more British-born workers on the dole.

The respected National Institute of Economic and Social Research found that there was "no association" between higher immigration and joblessness – even at times of recession or low growth of the sort that Britain is experiencing at the moment.

In fact, the Institute's researchers suggested that the opposite might be the case and that immigration acts as an economic stimulus, pushing total employment levels higher and dole claimant numbers lower than they would otherwise have been.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/immigration-does-not-cause-unemployment-6287404.html

dktreesea

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

But the jobs available today will not necessarily be where the jobs of yesterday were.

And we as a society cannot afford to pay people to sit in areas of high unemployment and collect benefits when the jobs may never return there.

Nor can most people in areas of low unemployment afford to have runaway local inflation in goods and services because employers are having to pay over the odds, because much of the labour force can't be ar5ed moving....

They probably can't afford to move. From a cash flow point of view, for a while at least, it would be a disaster. They could have a council house so decent rent, even when they work, plus they currently have a steady flow of income. What if the job/relocation don't work out? They will have lost their council house. They could find themselves out of work and homeless in their new city.

How many people who are strapped for cash do you think would take that risk?

As to our way too generous social welfare system, we haven't been able to afford it for years. It's about time we increased the NMW to a living wage, despite your misgivings about how people on fixed incomes could afford the resulting inflation, and started doing as they have done in Australia, making the gap between the dole and the FT NMW so great it doesn't make any sense at all not to work.

CLAPTON

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

Yes, damn those forum idiots..... And the economists at NIESR who researched the data to prove it... And the broadsheets that reported it.....

It's clearly all a big idiotic conspiracy.


http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/immigration-does-not-cause-unemployment-6287404.html

so immigrants don't fill existing jobs then do they?
they create their own demand
which is why you can't fill your vacancies even though we have had massive immigration?

not a conspiracy but an idiot interpretation of reports that within normal error margins prove nothing.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

dktreesea wrote: »

doing as they have done in Australia, making the gap between the dole and the FT NMW so great it doesn't make any sense at all not to work.

It already is.

Someone working full time on NMW is on £13,000+ a year.

Jobseekers allowance is just £3800.

If other benefits are making up the gap, then it's time to redesign the system to be less generous for extended periods of time.

Perhaps a relocation grant equivalent to transport costs and 4 weeks rent/living expenses would work.

Only available to places where there is low unemployment.

dktreesea

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

Yes, damn those forum idiots..... And the economists at NIESR who researched the data to prove it... And the broadsheets that reported it.....

It's clearly all a big idiotic conspiracy.


http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/immigration-does-not-cause-unemployment-6287404.html

I had a look at the NIESR report on migration. (source: http://niesr.ac.uk/sites/default/files/publications/dp420.pdf)
It's only recently published yet relies on studies published in 2008, so presumably based on research conducted prior to the current recession. Specifically it uses this research to support its position that:

"most of the researchers do not find evidence that the expansion of immigration leads to negative labour market outcomes for native-born workers"

Maybe that's true in a stable or expanding economy. I wonder if it holds out for a contracting economy, as ours has been since 2008, only just recently switching back to a growing economy?

Then there's the effect on the native population's wages, again, they quote three studies, one that finds no impact at all, another that says the wages of foreign migrants already here are negatiively impacted, and a third study that shows that both foreign migrants' and native workers' wages are significantly negatively impacted:

"Lemos and Portes (2008) study the labour market impact of A8 immigration to the UK and do not detect any significant effects on native's wages or unemployment. Manacorda et al (2012) attempt at resolving that observed insensitivity of natives' wages to immigration by arguing that UK native and foreign born workers may be imperfect substitutes. After estimating the elasticity of substitution between workers of different origin, they conclude that immigration mainly reduces the wages of immigrants, with little impact on those of natives. An empirical analysis of the effects of immigration on average wages in the UK is conducted in Nickel and Saleheen (2008). These authors find that, even though small, the immigrant-native ratio has a significant negative impact on the average occupational wage rates of that region, for both native and foreign workers. They also find that the biggest effect is in the semi/unskilled services sector."

And lo and behold, the worst impacts are on the unskilled and semi skilled services sector, the very sector that the long term unemployed might be able to get a foothold in, were it not for the competition from migrants.

Even though the overall effect of migration may be fiscally positive from the point of view of the migrants, there are numerous references qualifying this viewpoint throughout the report. Reference to other research that found:
[FONT=Calibri,Calibri][FONT=Calibri,Calibri]"the fiscal impact of the immigrant population is positive overall, although they also warn it is likely that this result masks the different performance of subsections of this population." [/FONT][/FONT]

and:

"Contrary to these positive results on the effects of immigration, Coleman and Rowthorn (2004) find that the purely economic consequences of large-scale immigration are not equally distributed, giving rise to winners and losers."

They make various other points, for example foreign migrants are not just better qualified overall than the native population; they are also cheaper to employ. Those two factors suggest that the foreigner, arriving on our shores and unemployed, competing with a native person who is also unemployed, may have the edge and get the job. The business is not at fault - they have chosen the higher qualified person who is on offer at a cheaper rate than the native person.

This is exactly the dilemma we currently have in the construction industry. Wages in general in that sector have been dropping through the floor during the recession. Foreign crews can afford to tender for the work at a lower rate than native workers want to work. As Conrad pointed out earlier, native workers are having to work at much lower rates of pay due to the influx of foreign workers.

Why is that desirable, that we should import so many workers that it brings down the prices our native workers can charge for their labour? The influx of foreign labour, as much as the recession, is probably what has kept wage inflation in Britain non existent for the last few years. Even if there has been good growth in the number of jobs available (and I question this, once the self employed growth is taken out of the equation) I don't see that a fall in the real value of wages - after all inflation for some essential items, like rents and fuel, has still been happening in those years - is good for the economy at all.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

dktreesea wrote: »

This is exactly the dilemma we currently have in the construction industry. Wages in general in that sector have been dropping through the floor during the recession.

I refer you to this....

A shortage of skilled labourers has helped push pay packets for the country's top bricklayers past the £100,000 mark, according to industry experts.

Recruitment firm Deverell Smith and building consultants EC Harris told The Times the recruitment problem was so acute it was threatening to damage efforts to boost housebuilding.

The firms warned that an exodus of labourers in the wake of the financial crisis meant that the construction industry was struggling to recruit enough bricklayers, joiners, stone-fixers and plasterers now the recovery was gathering momentum.

Australia and New Zealand were thought to have been the main beneficiaries of the emigration and EC Harris said that a decline in apprenticeships meant that the void would have to be filled by migrant workers from Eastern Europe.


New developments are springing up as the market recovers
Demand for construction workers had risen 125% since 2008, the newspaper said, when industry output was largely stopped in its tracks by the credit crunch and resulting recession.

http://news.sky.com/story/1238301/brickies-earning-100k-as-brawn-drain-hits

dktreesea

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

It already is.

Someone working full time on NMW is on £13,000+ a year.

Jobseekers allowance is just £3800.

If other benefits are making up the gap, then it's time to redesign the system to be less generous for extended periods of time.

Perhaps a relocation grant equivalent to transport costs and 4 weeks rent/living expenses would work.

Only available to places where there is low unemployment.

Yes, it isn't always just the dole. Someone living at home will be very motivated to work because of the gap. But someone with a couple of children in rented accommodation maybe less inclined to work when their benefits, for both parents, their children and their accommodation can already come to over £20k a year. Tax free, and considerably more than the full time NMW.

Is it any wonder that so many of the unemployed, cheered on by the DWP, have escaped into marginal self employment, so that they might preserve such a generous bounty?