BoE confirms what we knew already: migration driving down wages

Efour · 14 May 2015 at 14:01

Minimum wage sets the price of labour.

It doesnt matter if you have 100 trillion unskilled workers, who ever you employ will earn only minimum wage because that is the law....

If you withdraw foreign labour sources all you have left is low paid 0 hour contract British workers that could quite probably be better off on the Benefit train at the end of the day.

Stupid Benefit system
Stupid minimum wage that doesn't even pay for basic life necessities in most of the country.
Britain is fundamentally BROKEN from the very base.

D.P. · 14 May 2015 at 14:04

Apart from the fact that actually BoE have no such evidence and are merely reporting a conjecture, this has nothing to do with controlling immigration. IF British residents don't know how to use the internet to get a job then perhaps part of receiving JSA should be to become competent in doing internet searches for jobs?

"the Bank of England suggests", but where is the empirical evidence?

The simple fact is there is no evidence that immigration has had any significant effect on wages but even if there was there is a very simple solution. Make it illegal to pay immigrants a salary less than the local average for that job position. Problem solved without impacting Britain's economic growth or enforcing draconian measures.
Of course the racists and xenophobes would never stand for such a logical, rational and easy solution because it doesn't involve "OMG, send them back to bong bongo land"

scorza · 14 May 2015 at 14:05

Stretch said:
That's most people, including me, and I don't feel "screwed over", and I don't know anyone who does on this issue.

Fair enough, but have you tried going down the road and asking a few people in Peterborough?

spoffle said:
Just because the world is organised by arbitrarily drawn lines on a map doesn't mean feeling a connection to people based on said lines because they are within the same said lines as you are, makes any sense.

I'd love it to see you hop over the channel and try that one with the French - "hey amis, I'm one of you, we're all the same" lol. Like it or not the world is organised into nations with borders and will be for the considerable future.

scorza · 14 May 2015 at 14:05

Efour said:
Minimum wage sets the price of labour.

It doesnt matter if you have 100 trillion unskilled workers, who ever you employ will earn only minimum wage because that is the law....

If you withdraw foreign labour sources all you have left is low paid 0 hour contract British workers that could quite probably be better off on the Benefit train at the end of the day.

Stupid Benefit system
Stupid minimum wage that doesn't even pay for basic life necessities in most of the country.
Britain is fundamentally BROKEN from the very base.

I earn more than the minimum wage, a lot more. How do you explain that?

Mr C · 14 May 2015 at 14:08

scorza said:
This is my country though, why can't I speak out against an obvious injustice in my country? The reality is that the free movement of people is always going to screw over British working people more than anyone else in Europe because more citizens of EU states speak English as a foreign language than any other language.

You think the French and Spanish are happy for retired British people moving into their country, using their health service (Private or public that is still another person to wait behind in line at the pharmacy, A&E etc.), not contributing to the economy and since they are generally older using far more than the average person in medical care. Could you imagine the British uproar if some of our seaside towns ended up being swamped with ignorant foreigners who only moved for the weather, use our NHS and never paid anything into it and couldn't care less about the rest of the country.

In fact I would say we get the benefits of the free movement of labour, at least our migrants are coming for jobs, working, paying taxes and contributing to society and places like the south of France and Spain end up with all our pensioners and hooligans turning their seaside resorts in to little Britain.

That is what I would call an injustice.

Woden · 14 May 2015 at 14:10

spoffle said:
Why?

Maybe you should look up what arbitrary means, then.

1.based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system.

chanjy said:
Would you care to elucidate on that point?

Those "arbitrary lines" come from generations of war and politics. They have come to represent differences in laws, culture and identity.

Portugal and Spain border each other but have very different cultures.

D.P. · 14 May 2015 at 14:13

The BoE Seems to contradict their own statements;
http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/research/Documents/externalmpcpapers/extmpcpaper0017.pdf

The empirical literature from around the world suggests little or no evidence that immigrants have had a major impact on native labour market outcomes such as wages and unemployment. Recent work by a number of other authors for the UK is also consistent with this view.
...
There seems to be broad agreement that immigration is likely to have
reduced the natural rate of unemployment in the UK over the past few years

Stretch · 14 May 2015 at 14:14

scorza said:
Fair enough, but have you tried going down the road and asking a few people in Peterborough?

What's different about the people in Peterborough?

cheesyboy · 14 May 2015 at 14:15

D.P. said:
The BoE Seems to contradict their own statements;
http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/research/Documents/externalmpcpapers/extmpcpaper0017.pdf

There's doesn' seem to be anything contradictory in the quote you have used :confused:

chanjy · 14 May 2015 at 14:16

D.P. said:
The BoE Seems to contradict their own statements;
http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/research/Documents/externalmpcpapers/extmpcpaper0017.pdf

Correct. But evidence is the enemy of a good OcUK thread is it not?

The majority of studies estimate that migrants had little impact on average wages, differing in their assessments of whether migrants raised or lowered average wages. The results from Dustmann et al. (2005), Dustmann et al. (2008), Lemos and Portes (2008), Nickell and Saleheen (2008), Reed and Latorre (2009) and Nathan (2011) suggest that an increase of 10,000 in the number of migrants in the UK increased average wages by between -£2 and +£2 per year.

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploa..._data/file/257235/analysis-of-the-impacts.pdf

spoffle · 14 May 2015 at 14:16

scorza said:
I'd love it to see you hop over the channel and try that one with the French - "hey amis, I'm one of you, we're all the same" lol. Like it or not the world is organised into nations with borders and will be for the considerable future.

Can you point out where I said or suggested this?

Woden said:
1.based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system.

Yes, that would be one definition. You ignored the other one, I assume because it wasn't inline with your argument?

Those "arbitrary lines" come from generations of war and politics. They have come to represent differences in laws, culture and identity.

Portugal and Spain border each other but have very different cultures.

That doesn't mean it isn't arbitrary.

D.P. · 14 May 2015 at 14:18

cheesyboy said:
There's doesn' seem to be anything contradictory in the quote you have used

What, you mean apart form showing there is no significant effect on wages?

cheesyboy · 14 May 2015 at 14:20

D.P. said:
What, you mean apart form showing there is no significant effect on wages?

Oh, you mean contradicting what this thread is about?

Well, it's only contradictory if you take the OP and the rather skewed articles at face value.

Have a look at post #73 for a brief deconstruction of the "news".

It's all smoke and mirrors

scorza · 14 May 2015 at 14:21

Mr C said:
You think the French and Spanish are happy for retired British people moving into their country, using their health service (Private or public that is still another person to wait behind in line at the pharmacy, A&E etc.), not contributing to the economy and since they are generally older using far more than the average person in medical care. Could you imagine the British uproar if some of our seaside towns ended up being swamped with ignorant foreigners who only moved for the weather, use our NHS and never paid anything into it and couldn't care less about the rest of the country.

In fact I would say we get the benefits of the free movement of labour, at least our migrants are coming for jobs, working, paying taxes and contributing to society and places like the south of France and Spain end up with all our pensioners and hooligans turning their seaside resorts in to little Britain.

That is what I would call an injustice.

Those are issues for the people of France and Spain respectively, I don't feel entitled to an opinion because they aren't my countries. I'll point out that while I don't know about Spain, in France there is no NHS - British people who live there have to buy mandatory health insurance so there's no resource contention in healthcare.

D.P. · 14 May 2015 at 14:24

scorza said:
Those are issues for the people of France and Spain respectively, I don't feel entitled to an opinion because they aren't my countries. I'll point out that while I don't know about Spain, in France there is no NHS - British people who live there have to buy mandatory health insurance so there's no resource contention in healthcare.

And Immigrants to British pay National Insurance, so there is no resource contention in healthcare.

scorza · 14 May 2015 at 14:24

Stretch said:
What's different about the people in Peterborough?

My understanding is that Peterborough has experienced one of the highest levels of immigration from eastern European countries. They may feel rather different about uncontrolled immigration and the effect it has had on their town than people from Cambridge.

D.P. · 14 May 2015 at 14:26

joeyjojo said:
Reading this again, can anybody actually tell me what was said to suggest migration is driving down wages?

I've found articles on the Telegraph, Daily Mail, and Express, but none of them actually have any detail. They all include the numbers of migrants, but no actual suggestions by the BoE or Carney that this is related to wage growth.

In fact where they do contain quotes they're deliberately misleading (surprise surprise). E.g. this from the Mail

It's not "partly explained", it's 90% explained by the increase in older workers and locals taking on more hours!

Poor guy, having to run around today doing interviews to try to combat the wilful misrepresentation of these rags.

I had the same difciulties. Spent 20 minutes searchign for the original article and there is absoltuely ntohgin to find on the internet or BoE page.

Raggs · 14 May 2015 at 14:33

Hardly surprising so many have come, was shocked to learn a Romanian washing cars for 40 hours here earns double what a doctor gets in Romania. so six quid an hour is big money to them.

The job market is like any other flood it with applicants, this will enable business to pay as little as possible out in wages. another reason to GTFO of Europe now.

roll on the referendum

cheesyboy · 14 May 2015 at 14:40

Raggs said:
Hardly surprising so many have come, was shocked to learn a Romulanian washing cars for 40 hours here earns double what a doctor gets in Romania. so six quid an hour is big money to them.

The job market is like any other flood it with applicants, this will enable business to pay as little as possible out in wages. another reason to GTFO of Europe now.

roll on the referendum

Except there's no actual evidence that immigration has pushed wages downwards. And the BoE haven't actually said what the OP and those articles claim.

As I said earlier:

cheesyboy said:
Why would foreign labour push down labour prices when we have 1.8 million unemployed anyway?

It's not like there's a shortage of labour keeping prices high, is it?

Dis86 · 14 May 2015 at 14:50

D.P. said:
And Immigrants to British pay National Insurance, so there is no resource contention in healthcare.

The post referred to retired folks. Last time I checked they don't pay national insurance.