REPORT: Economic Benefits Of Migration Debunked, ‘A Reservoir For Low-Cost Labour’

A stunning new report on migrant employment has skewered the oft-cited economic argument for mass migration, revealing that most migrants are unemployed for years, and countries won’t see a benefit for at least a generation.

The report for German paper Die Welt entitled “The Truth about the Refugee Job Wonder” asks if German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s pronouncement that migrants will be the “labour revitalisation” of Germany is actually true? It turns out Syrians, Afghans and Iraqis are more likely to be unemployed than the average German by a large margin.

The Institute for Employment Research (IAB) has conducted research into migrant employment rates and found that in the case of Syrians their employment rate has dropped from 32 percent to only 9 percent as recently as last November.

Afghanis and Iraqis, who are increasingly becoming a larger proportion of migrants coming into the EU according to Frontex, don’t fare much better, with Afghan employment participation going from 37.6 percent to 24.5 percent and Iraqi employment going from 34 percent to 25.3 percent over the same five year period. To put this in perspective, the employment rate of the average German is 67.3 percent.

Migrants have an especially difficult time and even those with professional qualifications tend to have a hard time becoming employed. It is actually easier, according to the report, for an unskilled native worker.

According to IFO Institute for Economic Research migration expert Gabriel Felbermayr, “We know that people who come as refugees, much more difficult to integrate into the labor market than those who immigrate to work,” and said, “Usually it takes at least a generation,” until the employment rate, “has approached the domestic population.”

This amount of time to enter the workforce presents huge problems for the welfare system that the migrants are thought to be able to prop up. Often the countries which they come from improve and conditions allow them to go back, meaning a zero return on investment from the costs associated with housing and education.  

Employers often fail to recognise the qualifications of migrants from Africa and the Middle East as they have found their education not comparable to a European equivalent qualification. This leads many former professionals to low paid work and the report says, “for companies the refugees are mainly REPORT: Economic Benefits Of Migration Debunked, ‘A Reservoir For Low-Cost Labour’,” and not the engineers and academics many left wing media sources have said.

The report seems rather late when economists from elsewhere have been saying that the migrants will be a net negative for the German economy and rather than a benefit.

Migration Watch UK already debunked a report that tried to explain the economic benefits of the migrant crisis. They determined, as Die Welt has, that putting over a million people on welfare, paying for retraining, language courses, accommodation and the like only takes more money from the German taxpayer instead of supposedly propping up Germany’s decaying welfare state.

The German people themselves appear wiser than the experts who argue the economic benefit. It was revealed that only 16 percent of them believe Chancellor Merkel’s idea of a migrant-fuelled economic miracle, as Breitbart London has reported.