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Financial Times:
Free Lunch: My country right or wrong

7 October 2016

Many government ministers have suggested that immigration is an obstacle to natives getting jobs. Jonathan Wadsworth takes up the home secretary's challenge to talk about immigration and how it may affect young people's labour market opportunities - and points out that it is hard to find any sign that it affects those opportunities at all. He examines the geographic relationship between the change in the rate of youth not in employment, education or training and in the rate of immigrant workers - and finds there is none.
That complements the assessment of the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics before the referendum, which showed there was no correlation between changes in immigration and changes in native pay or employment by location. A new overview from the centre points out even within the same skill level, immigrants and native workers are not necessarily close substitutes. Indeed those who suffer most from increased immigration are earlier immigrants. Conversely, a reduction in immigration after Brexit may not increase employment for natives but rather lead to more automation in some industries that rely heavily on migrant labour.

This article was published by the Financial Times's Free Lunch blog on October 7, 2016
Link to article here

Related articles
Let's talk about immigration: young people, jobs and training, Jonathan Wadsworth, The State of Working Britain blog, Centre for Economic Performance, October 5, 2016

Related publications
Brexit and the UK Labour Market, Barbara Petrongolo. Article in CentrePiece Volume 21, Issue 2, Autumn 2016
Brexit and the Impact of Immigration on the UK, Swati Dhingra, Gianmarco Ottaviano, John Van Reenen and Jonathan Wadsworth, CEP Brexit Analysis Series Paper No.05, May 2016
Technical Appendix to 'Brexit and the impact of immigration on the UK'
See the whole series of CEP Brexit Analysis papers here
See all postings on The State of Working Britain blog here

Related links
Barbara Petrongolo webpage
Jonathan Wadsworth webpage
Labour Markets Programme webpage
Barbara Petrongolo CEP publications webpage

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