The scenes as the migrant camp was cleared in Calais once again provoked bitter divisions in British society. Metropolitan luvvies and liberals tweeted their virtue and called for no restrictions on immigration. In more traditional areas, there is active resentment at the possibility of even further inflows of foreigners.
When New Labour decided in the early 2000s to allow large-scale immigration from new EU member states, we were seriously invited to believe that an influx of immigrants on a scale unprecedented in our history would only have positive economic effects and would boost economic growth.
Economics certainly suggests that an increase in labour supply can increase growth in output. But in the so-called neoclassical growth theory of economics, even in the post-endogenous variety made notorious by Ed Balls in his previous incarnation, by far the most important source of sustained growth is innovation.
A truly modern economy does not rely on more and more capital and labour being fuelled into the machinery of production. That was the old Soviet model.
A modern economy relies instead on innovation. So there are at best limited benefits from importing more and more labour. True, immigrants can bring new skills, found innovative new businesses and, as they tend to be younger, they can slow down the ageing of society. But they, too, get older eventually, so this is not a long-term solution.
The anxieties about immigration are not couched in the arcane language of economic theory. But a fuller appreciation of the theory does enable us to understand why people worry so much. Underlying the theory are the assumptions that supply and demand balance in labour markets, and that the prices of the various kinds of labour – in other words, wages – are set at appropriate levels.
A recent paper in the Journal of Economic Perspectives by Christian Dustmann and Uta Schönberg of University College London shows that large-scale migration in fact creates serious imbalances and mismatches in labour markets.
They provide extensive evidence of what economists call “downgrading”. “Downgrading” occurs when the position of immigrants in the labour market is systematically lower than the position of natives with similar education and experience levels. The authors calculate that, in Germany, recent immigrants have wages which are on average 17.9 per cent below those received by natives with similar age and skill profiles. In the US, the figure is 15.5 per cent and in the UK 12.9 per cent.
Dustmann and Schönberg illustrate the disruption which mass migration can cause even more starkly. They calculate that while 69.7 per cent of immigrants in their samples can be classed as high skilled in terms of their education, only 24.6 per cent are in high skilled jobs. In their dry terminology, this means that “immigrant arrivals to the United Kingdom were a supply shock in the market for low-skilled workers”.
Mass migration has not simply meant more people competing for jobs. It has meant that people with higher skill levels are competing for your job. In other words, the people of Burnley and Bradford have been right all along, and the metropolitan liberal elite completely wrong.
Paul Ormerod
As published in CITY AM on Tuesday 1st November
Image: Calais Jungle by malachybrowne is licensed under CC by 2.0
