The claim that migrants are disproportionately accessing jobs in Britain compared to workers of UK nationality is based on a simple misreading of the statistics.
Yesterday’s monthly labour market statistics (pdf) from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) were bad news; not disastrous, but bad enough to spark serious concerns about the direction of the UK labour market.
They were particularly disappointing because the previous month’s figures (pdf) had shown what looked like a promising fall in unemployment: the working age unemployment rate had fallen to 7.8%, the first time it had moved outside the range 7.9-8.1% since the spring of 2009.
In contrast the figures for March-May showed the working age unemployment rate rising back to 7.9%.
The very slight numerical fall in unemployment which dominated yesterday’s headlines can be discounted; what is important is the return of the unemployment rate to its earlier value, which means unemployment in the UK has essentially been oscillating around 8% for the last two years.
To avoid confusion, this is the unemployment rate for those aged 16-64: ONS also reports the unemployment rate for all economically active people over 16, which is slightly lower, and to add to the confusion, Eurostat uses a different base again- see below.
To see why this stability of the unemployment rate is worrying, Graph 1 below shows unemployment from 1971 up to yesterday’s figures. We have to go back to the mid 1980s to find a period when unemployment rose and then stabilised at its higher rate for a comparable length of time.
As of the present moment, unemployment in the UK looks frozen: we have yet to see any sign of a downward trajectory.
Graph 1:
This should be a source of concern, not grounds for apocalyptic prophecies. Every recession is different and it remains the case that unemployment rose much less during this recession than was widely expected given the collapse in output.
This month’s downturn may just turn out to be a blip in the downward trend we have been waiting for. But the absence of any real signs of labour market recovery in the UK contrasts with the picture in a number of comparable economies.
The figures in Graph 2 below from Eurostat, which run from June 2010 to April this year, show that the stability of UK unemployment is not a general pheneomenon across wealthy economies. (Note that the population base is different for these figures).
Graph 2:
There were other worrying signals in yesterday’s figures. It is striking that while male unemployment is far lower now than in the early 1990s, at 6.3% compared to a peak of 10.7% in late 1993, female unemployment at 6.1% is only one percentage point lower than it was then.
The long term unemployment rate (24 months or more) has more than doubled since the summer of 2008 and has shown a particularly sharp upward trajectory over the last year. Flows on to Jobseeker’s Allowance have substantially exceeded off-flows since March, in contrast with most months last year.
With all of these negatives to focus on in yesterday’s figures, what did the Daily Mail choose to highlight?
‘Iain Duncan Smith was RIGHT: Foreign workers took three in four new jobs in Britain in the last year’
– Number of foreign men and women in work soars by 334,000 to over 4 million
– British-born workers finding employment in same period rose by only 77,000
Now anyone reading this might be under the impression that only 77,000 ‘British-born’ workers got a job last year, compared to 334,000 ‘foreign workers’. So it’s worth pointing out that even with unemployment remaining stable, some four million people left the claimant count last year, most of them for jobs, and they represent only a fraction of people moving from unemployment into work.
Sir Andrew Green, chairman of MigrationWatch UK, said:
“It is impossible to look at these figures which show a substantially greater increase in the foreign-born workforce than in the British-born workforce without deducing that there has been a significant impact on the prospects for British workers.
“There is no point in being in denial about this.”
In fact, it is perfectly possible to look at the figures without leaping to any such deduction, and without being ‘in denial’. Table 1 below shows why.
It doesn’t cover the same period as yesterday’s figures because ONS haven’t published the relevant data yet, but it illustrates the importance of a factor which rarely gets mentioned in these contexts, which is economic activity – basically, whether people are in the labour market or not.
Between 2009 and 2010 there was virtually no change in aggregate working age employment – along with a huge amount of turnover within this stable total, as we have seen – but for UK nationals of working age total employment fell by nearly 50,00 and non-UK nationals’ employment increased by 45,000.
Was this because migrants were crowding UK workers out of jobs? Hardly, because economic activity among UK nationals fell 42,000 over the same period. In fact, the change in the balance of UK national and non-UK national employment pretty much corresponded to the change in the numbers of economically active people in each group.
Table 1:
The claim that migrants are disproportionately accessing jobs in the UK labour market compared to workers of UK nationality is based on a simple misreading of the statistics.
Nonetheless, the combination of a stagnant labour market and commentators eager to voice their know-nothing insights at every available opportunity means we can expect to hear these claims with numbing regularity for some time to come, every time the monthly labour market statistics are released.
59 Responses to “The bad news in yesterday’s employment stats (and it’s not about migration)”
scandalousbill
Eds talking Balls,
You say:
“So if Griffin says that immigration in this country has accelerated rapidly in recent years and caused many social problems, then I won’t be dissuaded from agreeing with him just because I disagree with him in the strongest possible terms on many other issues.”
OK, you have the floor. So, which of the many social problems have immigrants caused? And what evidence can you provide to support your accusations?
Anon E Mouse
scandalousbill – It is not comparing different things when the description is of a job and a person to fill that job.
It is not a fantasy figure – it is 1.7 million jobs that have been 98% filled by non indigenous workers.
The number is 1.7 million scandalousbill. If foreign born workers hadn’t been here to fill those jobs then they would have to have been done by locals…
Ed's Talking Balls
You want a graph to show all social problems associated with immigration? I’m afraid you’ll be sorely disappointed. Not everything in life can be plotted on graphs and pored over by statisticians. I’m not going to go searching for them, but I reckon you could satisfy your curiosity by finding some charts showing that population growth on a small island has been driven, and is predicted to be driven among other things by immigration. There might be a table somewhere which shows how much public services spend on translation services too. There may or may not be one which shows how many people in this country have English as their first language or can at least speak it so that they can be understood. And while statistics exist on the number of illegal immigrants, they can hardly be relied upon since those who are here illegally don’t tell to fill in census forms or pay taxes.
Carry on believing, in your haughty manner, that those who have problems with immigration on the current scale are deluded fanatics. Polls indicate that there are many such people and, in areas such as Barking, they are among the working class that Labour was formed to represent. Shame that they have been abandoned, but I doubt they’ll forget.
Anon E Mouse
scandalousbill – I’m not trying to sound racist because I am far from that and whilst playing devils advocate here how about:
“Social cohesion is wrecked with mass migration to an area. Bradford riots for example.”
As Labour’s Jack Straw effectively articulated it is not possible to have a conversation with a woman forced to wear a death shroud burqa by her misogynistic husband which results in fragmentation of the community.
Go on….
scandalousbill
Anon,
Given your Bradford reference, would you say then that British expatriates have wrecked the Costa del Sol, Costa Brava, Cyprus and other such areas? I do feel that you are playing devil’s advocate in this instance.
Ed Talking Balls. Given your rant, the questions you need to answer is what are you so afraid of and why are you so afraid?