Immigration and the UK labour market: the latest evidence from economic research

Jonathan Wadsworth

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: During periods of strong economic growth, migration is and has always been important for filling gaps in the labour market. On balance, the evidence for the UK labour market suggests that fears about the consequences of rising immigration have been exaggerated. It is hard to find evidence of much displacement of UK workers or lower wages, on average. Immigrants, especially in recent years, tend to be younger and better educated than the UK-born and are less likely to be unemployed. They certainly do not receive preferential access to housing. But there have been some effects. The less skilled may have experienced greater downward pressure on wages and greater competition for jobs than others, but these effects still appear to have been modest. Unfortunately we do not know much about whether the effects of immigration are different in downturns. We also need to understand more about how capital and sectoral shifts in demand respond to immigration over the longer run. Future migration trends will, as ever, depend on relative economic performance and opportunity. But we still need to know more about the effects of rising immigration beyond the labour market in areas like prices, housing, health, crime and welfare.

Keywords: immigration; government policy; education; labour market; jobs; wages (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 9 pages
Date: 2012-06
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/57983/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Immigration and the UK Labour Market: The latest evidence from economic research (2012)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:57983

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager ().