Weekly Updates
Weekly Updates
- As economic insecurities increase in response to the rapid pace of change in the global economy, migration has become a politically sensitive topic. However, controlling levels of migration has economic consequences.
- Migrant workers tend to move to economies that have labor shortages. Few people consider going through the upheaval of migration just to be unemployed at the end of the process. Inward migration is therefore a good indicator of a strong economy. Within economies, migrants tend to go to those areas of the economy with labor bottlenecks.
- By solving bottlenecks in labor markets, migration can increase economic output. Employed migrants will then also consume in the domestic economy, adding to growth. Migration boosts to population help to explain why the UK’s trend economic growth is higher than many of its European neighbors. At least part of the US growth “exceptionalism” is the result of migration inflows.
- Any loss of established migrants creates wider economic problems, which would not occur when turning migrants back at the border. Imagine most of the bricklayers in a country were migrants, who then leave. The lack of labor would prevent houses being built. That would push up house prices, and create unemployment amongst native-born electricians, decorators, mortgage brokers, and real estate agents.
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