As the world spirals down into more chaos and political repression, many analysts from the UK has raised a serious question- how does it affect the job market?
In the past two decades alone, the UK has been experiencing a steady flow of immigrants, which has led to a rising in the overall population, productivity and wages. As the consensus suggests, over 1,00,000 immigrants have moved into the country over the last five years.
The economic growth has surprised analysts, who have concluded that the immigration has benefited the country in many ways. Even after Brexit and the UK’s exit from the European Union, ending decades of an alliance, the economy of the country has been firm.
While the impact of immigration on the job market, in general, is an extremely debatable topic, many analysts from the UK states that it has little to no impact on the wages of the existing workers. However, with the flow of more skilled immigrants, low wage workers might get affected in the short-run. However, for medium to high wage earners, the impact of immigration is almost negligible.
Much of the impact on the job market depends on the skills of the immigrants as compared to the skills of the existing workers. Rather than the overall wage, it is the distribution of the same that seems to be affected more. Since most of the immigrants are in their 20s and 30s, they are willing to work and grow, with an added advantage of being more flexible to the market changes.
Studies have also showcased that with a 1% increase in the wage of an immigrant, the existing workforce can face a decline of 0.3% in their wage. However, these studies correspond to a time when the economy in the UK was wavering from the pressure of Brexit. As the economy gets to a more steady place, absorbing more labourers, this wage difference is to erase in the long-run.
As for its effect on overall unemployment in the UK, no such surprising reports have come forth, deducing that immigration has no impact on the employment aspect either.
To conclude, until now the rising number of immigrants has been affecting the UK economy in a good way. Future predictions might seem to be in favour of migration, however, only time will tell what lies in store!
Sources:
fullfact.org
www.economicshelp.org
Image Source: www.economicshelp.org
