Supply and demand of workers does have an impact on wage levels, the UK government has admitted, as a senior minister noted cheap foreign labour ‘depresses wages’ in the UK in apparent response by calls by the left-wing opposition to significantly grow immigration.
Last week, Prime Minister Boris Johnson declared himself a “pro-immigration politician,” but Johnson’s Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab, admitted yesterday that while the UK should seek out high skilled labour, the number of low skilled workers flowing into the labour market from abroad has the impact of wage suppression.
“We want to be able to plug gaps in specific sectors, whether it’s in the NHS or whether it’s elsewhere. But what you don’t want to do is encourage over-reliance on cheap labour from abroad, which has a depressing effect on wages in this country”, Rabb told the BBC.
The admission is striking in that the Conservatives, who see themselves as the party of business, have long been reticent to admit the economic pitfalls associated with mass migration and the free movement of people.
Boris Johnson, known well for his strongly pro-illegal amnesty stance, has pledged to get the ‘numbers down’ on immigration after Brexit is delivered but has yet to commit to capping the number of immigrants per year, and has actually suggested that he would quadruple the amount of economic immigration to the British countryside.
The Tory leader has also dropped the Tory pledge to reduce immigration “from the hundreds of thousands to the tens of thousands” which Conservatives promised ahead of the 2010, 2015, and 2017 general elections, yet never delivered on.
The far-left Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn defended the free movement of people, saying: “We all benefit from people moving to, living in and working in different societies.”
“I’m proud of the diversity of our society and our country, and I want that to be a basis of how we live”, he added.
The Labour Party is set to release its election manifesto on Thursday. The manifesto is expected to be far more radical on immigration than the 2017 Labour Party manifesto which said: “Freedom of movement will end when we leave the European Union,” and that: “Labour will develop and implement fair immigration rules.”
Shadow Home Secretary, Diane Abbot said this week that: ‘The Labour Party is committed to maintaining and extending Freedom of Movement rights.’
The negative impact that mass migration has on wages has long been demonstrated, with the Bank of England confirming as early as 2015 that immigration was depressing wages in the UK, a simple expression of supply and demand.
This knowledge, however, has not deterred past Labour or Conservative governments from pursuing mass migration policies in the United Kingdom.
The same negative impact on wages was also demonstrated in America in a study conducted in 2018 by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), which found that blue-collar workers in landscaping, meatpacking, construction, and fishing jobs had their wages artificially depressed by immigration.
Alternatively, the ease at which a reduction in immigration can result in wage growth was demonstrated earlier this year in a study which found that a drop in immigration from mainland Europe since the 2016 Brexit Referendum has coincided with around half of all employers offering higher wages to prospective employees.
The same trend has also held true in America under the leadership of President Donald Trump, with even the New York Times conceding that a reduction in immigration has resulted in higher wages for working Americans.
Yet increases in wages are not always appreciated by corporate bosses. Lord Stuart Rose, the chairman of the official Remain campaign during the Brexit referendum, admitted that ending the free movement of people would indeed raise wages, but added: “that’s not necessarily a good thing.”
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