The underutilisation of talent in the migrant population reflects a failure of integration
Too often ‘migrants’ are lumped together in policy and public debates as a single population group. Yet the people who come to settle in the UK are highly diverse. This is reflected in the varied employment outcomes experienced by different groups within the migrant population, often reflecting dynamics that are given insufficient attention by policy makers.
Migrants coming from outside of the EU face the greatest challenges to integration in the UK labour market. In 2012, the employment rate for this group (including all those of working age and excluding those in regular education) was 68 per cent, compared with 75 per cent for non-migrants, and compared to between 80 and 82 per cent for EU migrants.
New research by IPPR has dug deeper into these figures to identify some of the characteristics that underpin the above variance.
To unpick some of the outcomes for particular migrant groups, our research looked at different groupings (considering gender, qualification and nationality among other things) and compared them like for like with the non-migrant population.
This revealed important differences between groups. For example, the employment rate for non-EU migrants falls short of those in the non-migrant population for all qualification levels, and the gap gets wider as the level of qualification decreases (see chart below).
But the picture is markedly different for men compared to women. Men from outside the EU have similar employment rates to those in the non-migrant population, irrespective of qualification level. Yet for women from outside the EU, the gap in employment rate with non-migrant women ranges from minus 16 percentage points for those with degrees to minus 22 percentage points for lower qualified women.
Employment gap (percentage point) between migrants from out side the EU and the non-migrant population, by qualification and gender
This almost entirely accounts for the overall employment gap that we see between all non-EU migrants and non-migrants, and shows that even very educated women from outside the EU have relatively low employment rates. This is particularly the case for some nationality groups – our findings show that women from south and southeast Asian countries are less than half as likely to be in work as men, with employment rates of 43 and 87 percent respectively (although there are signs that this gap is may be starting to narrow).
The underutilisation of talent and potential in the existing migrant population reflects a failure of integration. It leaves the UK in the paradoxical position of having considerable untapped potential within the existing migrant population while the country is struggling to boost ailing productivity, including through recruitment from abroad.
In light of this, policy makers should recalibrate their focus away from a preoccupation with controlling the nature and volume of future migration flows, and towards tackling the challenges faced by people that are already here and trying to engage in the UK labour market.
Alfie Stirling is a researcher at IPPR. Follow him on Twitter
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55 Responses to “The UK is failing to make the most of the skills and talents of its migrant population”
damon
Although he’s an extreme case, it’s kind of how much of the left have gone.
See the reaction to Farage the other night when he said Britain couldn’t take too many foreigners with HIV. There’s 24 million people with HIV or aids in Africa and there would clearly be a limit how many we could treat in Britain on the NHS.
But even Gary Liniker chipped in calling Farage pretty horrible for saying that.
All of the political class recoiled from what Farage said.
But it turns out what he said was reasonably accurate.
Leon Wolfeson
Ah yes, a moderate left winger to you is an “extreme case”, as you raise your banner of hate and use numbers who don’t and won’t come here with HIV as an excuse for closing the border and having violence and hate against immigrants and the Other.
Excluding people for controllable medical conditions…you use HIV as an excuse, when if you actually /cared/ economically – you’d be up in arms about diabetes, for instance. Nope, it’s an excuse aimed at brown people.
And people were quite right to point out your Dear Leader Farrage is making an excuse for his isolationist views again. There is, as experts note, no evidence for his claims. There is no evidence of “health tourism” on HIV, and it’s completely correct from a public health standpoint to treat it without cost.
But you obviously don’t care about that either.
Charlatans
Guest you are out of sync with the Polls: People are no longer mystified by this socialist rubbish you spout.
What sort of nutter would vote for a party that severely trashed Nations finances, not once, but last two times they were in power?
That allowed into the Nation net 5 million immigrants,over 1 million of them ROP where some even hate us and others that want to go back to join a death cult or do Jihad here.
Labour knows it takes only month or so for a migrant to come here, but to build houses, schools, hospitals for them takes years and years and yet have the brass neck, with their BBC placement allies to constantly misinform and indoctrinate the nation it is the Coalitions fault!
Who in their right mind is still voting Labour who’s Rotherham’s and Mid Staffs we all know about?
Labour that went against the will of the people who held the biggest demo ever, EVER! They fabricated lies to support a lunatic America President whose Middle East adventures have buried maimed, radicalised and displaced literally millions, YES MILLIONS – most heinous act a Government can commit? Resulting in Middle East on fire with a death cult
raging!
Something fishy about the polls showing Labour and Cons neck and neck!
damon
Yes Leon, you’re such a moderate.
Anyone who disagrees with you is a Jew hater. Obvious trolling and I don’t know why anyone who has control over this blog doesn’t just ban you.
These figures were in a Guardian article the other day:
”Of the 53,000 heterosexuals with HIV, according to Public Health England, 11,000 were African-born men and 20,700 African-born women. Levels of HIV infection in these migrant groups are lower than in their country of origin”.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/reality-check/2015/apr/03/do-foreigners-come-to-uk-to-get-hiv-treatment
sam
Leon Wolfson or, ( guest ) as you all know him, is a little difficult to comprehend. Leon has an agenda that I have yet to grasp. I have tried to convince him that I do not hate anyone. The only people that I would harm, would be someone that has someone I love or myself in an immediate life threatening situation. I think he has had something happen to him in the past that is causing him to lash out at people, perhaps not a Jew at all, perhaps a radical Muslim, testing the waters of non Muslims tolerance? He just runs the conversation in cycles.
pretty pointless to argue with him.