The Brexit Arms. Please drink ( & post ) responsibly.

[surferjet]

"Is it just that one Bank of England study?"

No its the BOE study, an LSE one, there are several others but the Oxford University Migration Observatories findings from looking at all the other studies findings together tend to support the findings that I've noted.

I'm not dismissing people's experiences but the fact is that night shift premiums have gone, and were much rarer than they had been certainly even before 2004.

The question I'm going to pose is, why between 2004 and 2007 did we have rising real wages in of the income brackets but high net immigration? Between 2008 and 2012 we had falling real wages but much lower net immigration, so why in years when net immigration has risen since 2013-2016 have real wages risen?

How can you explain to people who live in areas where there is low immigration and higher than average unemployment that the thing to blame is immigration? That's utterly disingenuous but providing simple answers to complex problems, which also have the beauty of pandering to people's prejudices.

To paraphrase honey badger, just tell them the grass is greener on the other side. It might not be.

Further to the NHS problem there were shortages of nurses and other medical staff for a long time and the immigration was to fill these shortages, as there was with many, many other industries, we haven't been training enough of our own for decades, never mind in the last one when the supposed cheaper immigrant labour from the EU has been available.

BTW I think that those of you on the leave side moaning about how people are portraying you on here need to look a little closer to home on the conduct of some posters and the way they behave in regard to the remain vote.

www.bankofengland.co.uk/research/Documents/workingpapers/2015/swp574.pdf

BoE study analysing the negative impact of immigration on UK average wages. Quite a technical analysis but some points to note:

1. Total stock of migrant workforce is more important than annual net migration.
2. There are regional variations.
3. Total negative average wage effect is small
4. Impact on wages varies by occupation but is significant for low skill occupations.
5. No analysis of non wage structural employment changes

BTW I think that those of you on the leave side moaning about how people are portraying you on here need to look a little closer to home on the conduct of some posters and the way they behave in regard to the remain vote.

Moaning?!
Ok then.

I don't like assumptions being made about me based on the way I vote.
It fucking irritates me beyond belief.
I'm not 'moaning' - that would imply a sense of ineffectual handwringing and chuntering.

And why are we expected to be the guardians of other Leave voters' language or words, just because we voted the same way?
I expect no one to take ownership of my words other than me - I expect the same from others.

What's missing from these threads is any recognition of successive governments' role in actively destroying collective bargaining as a mechanism for maintaining decent wages in relatively low skilled roles.

Free immigration will not drive down wages where you have strong institutions on the side of labour, able to collectively bargain decent terms and conditions. But on the contrary, the big mistake in the UK was for governments to sell the idea that union power is a drag on productivity, to introduce some of the most reactionary anti-trade union laws in the developed world - and to build a myth of government + hard working people verses unions. Into this toxic cocktail goes the myth of 'blame the immigrant'.

It took a strong government and a colluding press to destroy trade unionism in the uk as an effective force. That's the reason you lost your wage premia. But look around you - where unions are still effectively organised, they are doing a decent job at holding onto decent terms and conditions - otherwise why would the government need even more anti union laws, scheduled to become law on 1 April.

This is not the only reason for wage degradation. Technology is another obvious one - you couldn't have zero hours contracting until it was possible to summon workers instantaneously by text message, and to calculate complicated wage/hours/holidays etc instantly, using an outsourced computer programme.

Last week, those two cleaners who were sacked for going on strike when their wages were cut following a Tupe transfer. C&D cleaning, I think the outsourcing company was called. The HR director wrote to unison along the lines of 'ha ha how does it feel to be irrelevant?'. Now that's the sort of t**t you should be railing against if you want to know why people are not paid decent wages for anti social hours.

I've read the paper, but I'll quote it directly:

"indicates that a 10 percentage point rise in the proportion of immigrants working in semi/unskilled services — that is, in care homes, bars, shops, restaurants, cleaning, for example — leads to a 1.88 percent reduction in pay. "

But you also need to apply this via the regions that they work in, for anexample even Boston which many people cite as a place that has suffered a negative effects because of immigration has only had a 7 percentage point rise in the number of immigrants there, so this 1.8% fall in pay is even lower. There are very few areas in the UK that have seen an increase of this size in immigration, and in the main those regions voting out how not seen anything like that increase.

cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/brexit05.pdf

The LSE report:

"New evidence in this Report shows that the areas of the UK with large increases in EU immigration did not suffer greater falls in the jobs and pay of UK-born workers. The big falls in wages after 2008 are due to the global financial crisis and a weak economic recovery, not to immigration."

"There is also little effect of EU immigration on inequality through reducing the pay and jobs of less skilled UK workers. Changes in wages and joblessness for less educated UK born workers show little correlation with changes in EU immigration. "

As I said, the simple blaming of EU membership and immigration on the rising inequality in the UK is disingenuous.

I also totally agree with figment's post

cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/brexit05.pdf

The LSE analysis for comparison. Interesting that it attributes post 2008 wage stagnation almost entirely to the global economic downturn while attributing bottom end wage support to the increase in the minimum wage. There is very little actual analysis of immigration effects which are acknowledged to be greater in periods of economic contraction.

But net migration was far lower during the period 2008-2012.

Just from the headline points, but its significant cause you can go and read them yourself:

"New evidence in this Report shows that the areas of the UK with large increases in EU immigration did not suffer greater falls in the jobs and pay of UK-born workers."

There is plenty of analysis of the immigration effect.

I'd say that both pieces together, and others (look at the OUMU) show that the falls in wages/living standards/employment blamed solely on immigration by the leave campaign are not to be laid at the door of immigration. There are far many more factors at work and immigration blaming is an over simplification.

Most importantly, the constant referal to areas that are experiencing economic hardship and making links between their vote and the impact of immigration are nonsensical.

Sorry x-post, but my analysis stands.

I disagree, can I direct you to the section which starts from page 10 and ends on page 12.

The other reason for wage stagnation is that ever since 2010, governments have mandated that it be so - either through public sector pay freezes or 1% pay rises, or through the 60% cut in the funding made available to local authorities.

If, for example, local authorities have 60% less funding available for, say, social care but they no longer have to take direct responsibility for wages as an employer - because most LAs have outsourced their care provision to the private sector - then the answer is to make only the bare minimum of funding available to the care providing company and leave it up to them to decide how much they pay their staff, subject to the need to pay the minimum wage. It's brilliant really - the funder is now totally disconnected from the worker and can blame everyone but itself for low wage levels. Again the fact the some of the workers are from outside the EU is not what has caused this mess, although the government is now paying a high price for not having been honest with people about what was driving wage austerity.

Sorry! I meant to type 'outside the UK' - not 'outside the EU'!

Figment I don't disagree with what you are saying and I would add that welfare policy has also had an impact. However an endless supply of overseas workers - not just the 300k + who come but also the 300 million or so total EU workforce influences the government's ability to make these decisions and undermines the bargaining power of the "local" workforce, especially when the EU can be used as the scapegoat for not protecting workers' rights.

If you look at the example of the railways, where strong unions have managed to prevent workforce fragmentation, so that eg drivers are still able to strike to protect ticket office workers as well as other drivers without breaking the law, because (almost uniquely) they still share the same employer, wages have held up despite immigration (and that's despite the fact that ironically the RMT is one of only two leave voting trade unions (the other was the bakers and allied workers).

page 10-12 lots of wood for the trees data collection followed by extrapolation of analysis and discounting using suppositions based on extenuating factors outside the modelling.

you can quote reports all you like. people voted on what they have seen and experienced themselves and what they believe is the best for them.

realistically no they likely don't trust stats and reports when those same sources have been failing to represent their realities for ages. things like reports on quality of life that assume you are benefiting from low interest rates on your mortgage when in fact you're paying higher than ever rental rates.

Have a missed the second coming? Has Small risen from the dead to once more walk amongst us poor mortals and show us the error of our ways?

Your not the only one to think that Infinite!

"4. Impact on wages varies by occupation but is significant for low skill occupations."

This is very misleading. The effect may be statistically significant (i.e., not likely to have arisen by chance), but the size of the effect is very small. Saying that the effect is significant (in the everyday meaning of the word) implies that the effect is large, when in fact it isn't.

Interesting piece by John Harris in the Guardian today on complexity.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/dec/29/trump-brexit-society-complex-people-populists

The Paul Arbair article he refers to is interesting too.

paularbair.wordpress.com/2016/07/05/brexit-the-populist-surge-and-the-crisis-of-complexity/

In most Western countries, globalisation has been feeding rising inequality between those two groups (essentially those in the service based economy, including people,who make money out of money and those not - my insert) and there is no evidence that it could be any other way. The populist surge that is now at play is, to a large extent, a reaction of those who have been on the losing side of this trend. They tend to be on average rather older, more rural and less educated than those who have benefited from globalisation or aspire to make their way into the service-based, globalised urban ecosystems and have reasonable prospects of succeeding. Deep down, however, the divide is much more about social class than about age or education. Our reluctance to recognise this reflects the extent to which class issues have become taboo in Western societies. We don’t like to talk about class divisions, we don’t want to see them, or we pretend they don’t exist or they are not anymore relevant, but that doesn’t make them go away.

I don't agree with everything in those two articles but they contain some interesting food for thought.

".....the biggest effect is in the semi/unskilled services sector, where a 10 percentage point rise in the proportion of immigrants is associated with a 2 percent reduction in pay."

In this sector, according to the BoE analysis referenced above, the proportion of immigrants is above 30%. So that would imply a 6% reduction in pay based purely on an empirical examination of published pay rates. This ignores the "gig economy" and any deterioration in non-wage conditions.

Whether or not that is "significant" beyond the "statistical" definition is open to debate but in the context of a discussion of published research minimising the impact I tend to think it is.

I might be wrong, but if I'm reading it rightly the proportion of immigrants has to increase by 10 percentage points, it doesn't matter what the proportion of immigrants is overall, its the increase that causes the reduction in wages. I think Missmoon is right when she says that the effect may be siginficant, but the size is small.

The best example of anywhere seeing this level of increase would be Boston, which saw its over all population increase by 15% between 2001 and 2015, with an increase in the amount of immigrants from 1.3 so an almost 10 percentage point increase, so its likely that people in Boston on the lowest wages have seen slightly lower wages over the last 12 years. However, the 10 percentage point increase didn't happen within a year or so, so the effect would have been spread out.

You are correct in noting that other working conditions are not noted, but I'd also factor in the fact that for the lowest paid the tax threshold has risen considerable, and would most likely more than offset any decreases in pay caused by immigration.

Boston is actually a really interesting case study, if you look at their council briefing on the impacts of immigration.

www.boston.gov.uk/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=8079&p=0

Its interesting that the LSE findings that immigration has little effect on native unemployment is true here, as Boston has an extremely low level of unemployment.

However, there are very few other areas in the UK that have had such a large percentage point increase in migrant workers, and it is evident in many of the places that voted leave that there is not this level of immigration. So I find it difficult to see a trend between unemployment and low wage growth and "people voted on what they have seen and experienced themselves". It simply is not the case that there is a big enough immigrant population in places like Hartlepool, Sunderland, Carlisle, Anglesey etc to have had the effects that are being blamed on them.

This then links in with the LSE data that shows that the effect on real wages has been the fall out of the crash of 2008, and that they have fallen across all of the earning percentiles

blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/real-wages-and-living-standards-the-latest-uk-evidence/

Excellent articles linked by Wrong, some of which I don't agree with, but show that the issues that have effected many people are extremely complex. Which does go along with the idea that the simple answers given by the leave campaign, although effective in gaining votes, are actually not the answers to an extremely complicated problem.

Just to elaborate a bit more:

The immigrant component of the total working population was stable at about 8% until the mid 90s. It is now around 20% but in low skilled sectors it is above 30%. It is the stock rather than the flow of immigrants within the working population which is relevant and it is 2% empirically observed wage depression per 10%. (were it not for the mitigating impact of increases to the minimum wage the empirical data may have been closer to the Miami study at 3-4% per 10%).

However as this is a BoE study primarily looking at the labour market to inform monetary policy the overall impact on average wages throughout the economy is small and in the right direction from an inflationary perspective.