Written evidence submitted by Centre for Economic Performance

Immigration in the UK

Summary

• There are now around 9 million individuals (and 7.4 million adults of working age) living in the UK who were born abroad, more than double the number of 20 years ago.  The number of immigrants from EU countries living in the UK has tripled from 0.9 million to 3.3 million over the past 20 years.

• Immigrants are more educated, younger, more likely to be in work and less likely to claim benefits than the UK-born. About 44% have some form of higher education compared with only 23% of the UK-born. More than a third of all immigrants live in London, compared with only 11% of the UK-born, though the rate of change in immigration is higher outside London.

• Many people are concerned that immigration may reduce the pay and job prospects of the UK-born if these means more competition for jobs. But immigrants consume goods and services and this increased demand helps to create more employment opportunities. Immigrants also might have skills that complement UK-born workers. So we need empirical evidence to settle the issue of whether the economic impact of immigration is negative or positive for the UK-born.

The latest evidence suggests that neither immigration as a whole or EU immigration has had significantly large negative effects on employment, wages and wage inequality for the UK-born population. Nor, it should be said, have there been large positive effects.

• Immigrants do not take most new jobs. The immigrant share in new jobs is – and always has been – broadly the same as the share of immigrants in the working age population.

• Areas of the UK with large increases in total or EU immigration did not experience greater falls in the jobs and pay of UK-born workers. The big falls in wages observed after 2008 are much closely associated with the global financial crisis and a weak initial economic recovery, than immigration.

• There is also little effect of immigration on pay inequality. It has little effect on the relative pay and job prospects of less skilled UK workers. Changes in wages and joblessness for less educated UK-born workers show little correlation with changes in immigration.

• Immigrants pay more in taxes than they take out in welfare and the use of public services. They therefore help reduce the budget deficit. There is little evidence that immigrants have a negative effect on local services such as crime, education, health, or social housing.

Centre for Economic Performance

London School of Economics and Political Science

Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, UK

Web: http://cep.lse.ac.uk CEP on Twitter: @CEP_LSE

The CEP (http://cep.lse.ac.uk) is an interdisciplinary research centre at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). It was established by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) in 1990 and is now one of the leading economic research groups in Europe.  The Director is Professor Stephen Machin.

This submission has been put together by Professor Jonathan Wadsworth, professor of economics at Royal Holloway College University of London and a senior research fellow at the LSE’s Centre for Economic Performance. He was a member of the Home Office’s Migration Advisory Committee from 2007 to 2016. 

For further information, contact:  Jonathan Wadsworth.

Introduction

Immigration to the UK has grown a lot over the last 20 years and a significant fraction of this growth has been from other EU countries, especially after 2004 and the accession of the eight East European countries (‘A8’). There are now around 9 million individuals (and 7.4 million adults of working age) living in the UK who were born abroad.  The number of immigrants from EU countries living in the UK has tripled from 0.9 million to 3.3 million over this period.

In the referendum debate about the UK’s membership of the European Union (EU), a major argument of the Leave campaign was that Brexit would allow more control over the flow of immigrants to the UK from the rest of the EU. Many people continue to be concerned that high levels of immigration have hurt their jobs, wages and quality of life. Higher immigration has increased overall national income (more workers will generate more GDP) benefited the immigrants who come to the UK since, by and large, they are better off than in their country of origin. But has it been economically harmful to people born in the UK? In this Report, we analyse the most recent data to examine whether immigration has affected the economic prospects of the UK-born.  The first part of the report documents trends in immigration over time and the second part summarises the evidence on the effects of immigration to the UK with an emphasis on how the prospects of UK-born workers are affected by immigration.

1. Trends in Immigration to the UK

Immigration has undoubtedly increased in the UK population a lot over the past 20 years. But this is not an unprecedented rise. Between 1975 and 1990 the UK working age population grew by around 200,000 a year, on average. This was driven not by immigration, but by a rise in the UK-born population (baby boomers reaching maturity).  Between 1995 and 2016 the working age population also grew by around 200,000 a year. The majority of this later growth was however due to immigration. Some 17.9% of the UK working age population are now immigrants, more than double the share twenty years ago.

Table 1. Immigrants in the UK

Source: CEP analysis of Labour Force Survey. Working age population is 16-64.

The UK is not however particularly different from many other OECD countries with regard to its share of immigrants or with regard to the rate of new inflows. The UK is, and has been for some time, a middle ranking country in terms of its foreign-born population share (Figure 1). [1]

Figure 1. Immigrant Shares across the OECD

Source: OECD (2016) https://www.oecd.org/els/mig/keystat.htm

However according to regular opinion polling, immigration continues to be at the forefront of the public’s concerns, (Figure 2) so it is important to try and assess the evidence on immigration’s effects in the labour market and in the wider economy.

Figure 2: Public Perception of Important Issues Facing Britain

Source: IPSOS MORI (2016).

Immigration to the UK

The total population of immigrants depends on both the size of inflows and the length of stay, which in turn is related to the number of outflows of immigrants. If more people arrive than leave then the immigrant population will rise. Equally, if immigrants stay in the UK for longer then outflows will fall and the immigrant population will rise. The UK government’s target of reducing net migration (the difference between the number of people entering the UK and the number of people leaving) to tens of thousands requires either a fall in the numbers entering the UK or a rise in the numbers leaving the UK (or both).

According to the International Passenger Survey (IPS) total annual outflows into the UK have been larger than yearly inflows since 1993, (Figure 3). Inflows have grown steadily over time while outflows have been broadly constant. In the last few years, net inflows have again risen significantly as the economy has recovered. So rising numbers of new migrants explains much of why the UK immigrant population is rising.

Figure 3 (second panel) shows how the net flows have changed for EU and non-EU immigrants. For the last six years, immigration from the EU has been growing faster than immigration from elsewhere. In the year to June 2016, net immigration from the EU was around 190,000, comprising 285,000 EU nationals arriving and 95,000 leaving. This is only just below the figure of 200,000 net immigration for non-EU nationals.[2]

Figure 3: Net immigration to the UK, 1991-2

Source: ONS (2016)

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/internationalmigration/datasets/migrationstatisticsquarterlyreportprovisionallongterminternationalmigrationltimestimates

Who migrates to the UK?

When the East European A8 countries[3] joined the EU in 2004, immigration from the EU rose significantly, then fell back during the recession 2007 and resumed thereafter. In 2016, there were around 3.3 million EU immigrants living in the UK up from 0.9 million in 1995 - a rise to 5.3% of the population from 1.5%. Around 2.5 million of these migrants are aged 16-64 and two million are in work. EU countries now account for 35% of all immigrants living in the UK.   The top twelve immigrant sending countries are outlined in Figure 4. These populations reflect the changing history and patterns of immigration to the UK over the last seventy years. Poland is now the largest source country of immigrants – at around 940,000 – followed by India (750,000) and Pakistan (480,000).  Lithuania supplies most migrants per head of its own population (180,000 immigrants living in the UK is around 6% of its own population).

Figure 4: Immigrants by country of origin, 2016

Source: CEP analysis of Labour Force Survey.

Immigration patterns within the UK

There has long been a greater concentration of immigrants in London than in the rest of the country (Figure 5, panel 1). Almost 40% of London’s population was born abroad. More than a third (37%) of all migrants to the UK live in London compared with only 10% of UK-born. In contrast, less than 5% of the North-East (excluding Tyne and Wear) were born abroad. Migrants from the EU are more evenly distributed across the UK, though again London accounts for the largest fraction of EU migrants.  The pace of change in immigration across different areas of the UK is quite different, (panel 2). Immigration has grown proportionately more in areas with relatively little experience of immigration.  It may be that the pace of change, even when immigration is low, helps shapes people’s perceptions about the effects of immigration.

Figure 5: Share of Immigrants in Regional Populations, 2016

Source: CEP analysis of Labour Force Survey.

Immigrants are, on average, more educated than the UK-born (Table 2) – almost twice as many immigrants have some form of higher education (46% compared with 24% UK-born). Only 18% of immigrants left school at 16 compared with 43% of the UK-born.

Table 2: Education Attainment and immigrant status (working age population) 2016

Source: CEP analysis of Labour Force Survey.

Notes: The A8 countries are the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia, all of which joined the EU in 2004. Working age population is all individuals between the ages of 16 and 64.

2. Immigration, Jobs and Wages

National trends

About 70% of EU immigrants say they come to the UK because of work-related reasons, as opposed to study or joining their families (ONS, 2016). Since immigration increases the total number of people in work or looking for employment, does that mean that UK workers must have been harmed by this increased competition for jobs?

The short answer is ‘no’. A belief otherwise is called the ‘lump of labour fallacy’. There could be some disadvantages from immigration only if the total number of jobs was fixed and then only where immigrants compete for a particular type of job. But since immigrants also consume local services and goods, this increases demand and so raises job prospects for all who produce those goods and services. Another way to think about this is the realisation that over the last 100 years, the UK population has grown by around 50% but the unemployment rate has not trended inexorably upward.

But even if there is no reason to think that immigration should increase unemployment, is it not obvious that an increase in the supply of workers must drive wages down? Again, this isn’t necessarily so. Any supply effects on wages could be offset by the increased demand that a rising population brings. In addition, greater movement of labour allows countries and individuals to specialise in what they are best at, just like increased trade. Firms will change the mix of their products to account for the new skills available to them. Immigrants, especially if they are more skilled, can boost productivity. All these effects will tend to increase wages.

Consequently, the impact of immigration on UK-born workers is an empirical question and not a foregone conclusion. We need to look at data for evidence.

The best source of data to explore the impact of immigration is the Labour Force Survey (LFS). This is because it is possible to measure the economic circumstances of people born in the UK and compare them with immigrants from the EU and other countries. The Annex gives more details.

Table 3 shows that EU immigrants are not only more educated, they are also more likely to be in work (78%) than UK-born individuals (72.3%) and less likely to be unemployed or economically inactive. This is particularly true of A8 immigrants: more than 80% of them are in work. Immigrants as a whole are less likely to be in work than the UK–born. This is driven by low levels of labour market participation of women from certain non-EU countries.

Table 3: Employment, unemployment, students and economic inactivity by immigrant status (working age population) 2016

Source: CEP analysis of Labour Force Survey.

Immigrants are typically younger. Among the working age population, the average age of the UK-born is 40, the average western EU immigrant is 38 and the average A8 immigrant is 34.

Education partly determines the occupations and industries in which an individual will work. In addition there are restrictions on sectors and occupations in which non-EU migrants can work. Immigrants make up 17% of the employed workforce. There is a larger than average share of immigrants in professional occupations (Table 4). But there are also more immigrants than average in processing and elementary occupations (such as cleaning and bar work). This is also higher than might be expected given their qualifications. This is particularly so for EU migrants.  According to the LFS 45% of the 250,000 working in “elementary processing” (SOC code 913) are immigrants, (30% of the workforce is from the EU). Similarly, nearly one third of science professionals (SOC code 211) are immigrants. In contrast, just 13% of the 90,000 health and social service managers (SOC code 118) are immigrants.

This occupational mix in both high-skilled and less skilled jobs is reflected in the distribution of immigrants across industries. The health, hotel and restaurant sectors employ more migrant workers than other sectors, particularly A8 migrants – who are also concentrated in manufacturing. The energy, agriculture and public administration sectors employ relatively fewer migrant workers (see Table 5).

Table 4: Occupational distribution of immigrants and UK-born, 2016

Source: LFS.

Table 5: Industrial distribution of immigrants and UK-born, 2016

Source: LFS.

There is a huge amount of research examining the effect of immigration on jobs and wages (summarised in Wadsworth, 2015; Portes, 2016a; Centre for European Reform, 2016; Dustmann et al, 2005, among others). The conclusion of this research is that the large increase in immigration in the UK has not significantly harmed the job and wage prospects of UK-born workers. Most of this work, however, was conducted prior to the global financial crisis and the Eurozone crisis. So it is reasonable to ask whether these findings have changed after the most severe economic downturn for 80 years.

Immigrants and new jobs

It is sometime said – wrongly - that immigrants are taking a majority of all the new jobs generated. This is based on a misinterpretation of net changes in aggregate employment data (which is the difference between all jobs created and all jobs lost in any year). The top panel of Figure 6 suggests that immigrants in recent years have accounted for the majority of the net change in employment. Net employment grew by around 500,000 in 2016 and immigrant employment by around 300,000 – but this net change is the difference between, approximately, 4 million new jobs being created and 3.5 million jobs being lost. When the immigrant working age population is rising faster than that of other groups, the number of immigrants in work will tend to grow faster (just as the numbers of women or people with freckles in work would grow if their respective populations increased and that of others stayed static). To look at who gets new jobs we need to look at evidence on hiring. The second panel of Figure 6 shows that the actual immigrant share in new jobs (the share of immigrants in jobs that are three months old or less) is – and always has been – broadly the same as the share of immigrants in the working age population. (It is a little higher partly because immigrants tend to be younger and job turnover is higher among the young).  So immigrants account for around 1 in 5 of all new hires.

Figure 6: Immigrant share in new jobs

Source: LFS.

Is immigration correlated with changes in joblessness and wages?

Figures 7 to 9 plot the unemployment, employment and wage trends for individuals born in the UK alongside the trends in immigration in total and from the EU. In Figure 7, at a time when both total and EU immigration has been rising sharply (after 2004), UK unemployment for those born in the UK rose – but then fell back to a very low level, while immigration kept on rising. Indeed, despite the global crash, the rise in unemployment for UK-born workers was much less than in previous downturns when immigration was much lower.

Figure 7: Immigration and Unemployment of UK-born, 1975-2016

Source: CEP analysis of Labour Force Survey. Notes: working age population is 16-64 for men, 16-59 for women.

A similar pattern can be seen using the fraction of the working population in jobs (the employment rate) for UK-born workers (Figure 8).[4] The employment rate of UK-born workers goes up and down with the economic cycle, but has risen recently in the period when both total and EU immigration is also rising. Indeed the employment rate for UK born is now higher than levels seen at the peak of previous recoveries.

Median real wages for those born in the UK were growing from the late 1990s until the global financial crisis. Since then, wages fell by about 10%.[5] Such falls in real wages are unprecedented in the post-war period. Real wage growth has begun to grow again recently but remain well below 2008 levels. The story of the latest recession was not that many more people lost their jobs, but that most people’s wages fell. Figure 9 confirms that this fall happened while both total and EU immigration were rising – but equally the big gains in real wages for UK workers were experienced at a time when immigration was also rising. So the cause of the fall of wages is the impact of the Great Recession – not immigration.

Figure 8: Employment rate of UK-born and Immigration, 1975-2016

Source: CEP analysis of Labour Force Survey

Notes: working age population (16-64 for men, 16-59 for women).

Figure 9: Median real hourly wages for the UK-born, 1995-2016

Source: CEP analysis of Labour Force Survey.

Notes: Median wage is deflated by the CPI.

Immigration, jobs and wages – local areas

Although there appears to be little correlation between immigration trends and the average worker’s jobs or wages, what about an impact on certain types of workers? Even if no one loses on average, could there be certain groups who do suffer badly?

The fact that immigrants are more educated would suggest that, if anything, they put downward pressure on the wages of higher wage people, thus reducing inequality. But there is concern that less skilled workers are hurt if educated immigrants are willing to accept low paying jobs (Migration Advisory Committee, 2014), and as we show in Table 4 above, a third of EU nationals are in the relatively low skilled ‘elementary and processing occupations’ compared with 15% of the UK-born in work. Given that immigrants are more highly educated, this may be because they are not using their skills fully. But it may also reflect the fact that they are younger and so less likely to be in more senior managerial and professional roles.

Figure 10: Wage inequality for UK-born workers and Immigration 1995-2016

Source: CEP analysis of Labour Force Survey.

Notes: The Figure tracks growth in real wages (deflated by CPI) relative to level of wages in 1995 for the bottom 10th percentile, the median (50th) and top 10th (90th percentile) of UK-Born workers. For example a value of one indicates the same level as 1995 and a value of 10 indicates real wages 10% above 1995 level. Working age population (16-64 for men, 16-59 for women).

If we track the wages of UK-born workers at the top, middle and bottom of the pay distribution over time (Figure 10), we see the sharp fall in real wages since the recession in 2008 hit everyone by broadly the same amount (around 10%) . So most people are equally worse off. The introduction of the minimum wage in 1999 gave a boost to pay growth at the bottom, which continued through to the late 2000s. Again, the rise in immigration occurs both in periods of relative wage growth at the bottom wage levels and in periods of relative wage stability at the bottom. So it is hard to see evidence of relative wage falls for low paid UK workers when immigration is rising.

On the face of it, it would seem that the recession coincides with much of the recent bad experiences of UK-born workers with regard to jobs and pay rather than rising immigration.

Local area effects

Looking at economy-wide changes might disguise effects in local areas where immigration has gone up by a lot. The most straightforward way to investigate this issue is to examine whether areas of the UK that had larger influxes of immigrants also had worse job and wage outcomes for the UK-born relative to other areas. Looking at the change over time controls for lots of other features of the local labour market that could also explain unemployment and wages in those areas.[6]

Figure 11 considers changes in the unemployment rates of the UK-born across local authorities in relation to changes in EU immigration between 2008 and 2015 (one dot for each of the 201 local authorities). The solid red line summarises the relationship between immigration and UK-born unemployment rates. If immigration increased unemployment, we would expect a strong upward sloping line: more EU immigrants would mean more unemployment for local workers. In fact, the line indicates that a 10 percentage point increase in the share of EU immigrants in a local area is associated with a 0.4 percentage point reduction in the unemployment rate in that area. But it is very clear from the graph that there is no statistically significant relationship (negative or positive) of EU immigration on unemployment rates of those born in the UK.

Figure 11: Unemployment rates of UK-born & EU immigration

Source: CEP analysis of Labour Force Survey.

Notes: Each dot represents a UK local authority. The solid line is the predicted ‘best fit’ from a regression of changes in unemployment on the change in share of EU immigrants in each UK local authority. These are weighted by the sample population in each area. Slope of this line is -0.04 with standard error of 0.05, statistically insignificantly different from zero.

So why do some people think immigration has hurt jobs? Look at two areas – dots A and B in Figure 11. Both have had increases in the EU immigrant share of over 8% - well above the national average. In area A unemployment for the UK-born has risen by over 3%, which is also above the national average. So in area A it feels like immigrants are bad for jobs. However, area B has had a similar increase in immigration, while unemployment here has fallen by 2% points. Therefore, just because immigration and unemployment both go up in an area does not mean that immigration is the reason for rising unemployment, since it is quite easy to find areas where immigration went up and unemployment fell. Something else must underlie the ill fortune of UK-born individuals in areas with rising unemployment.

Figure 12 provides the same analysis of the impact of EU immigration on pay. Again, there is no apparent link between changes in the real wages of UK nationals and changes in EU immigration. Wages of UK-born workers changed at much the same rate in areas with high EU immigration as in areas where the change in EU immigration was low.

Figure 12: Wages of UK-born & EU immigration

Source: CEP analysis of Labour Force Survey.

Notes: Each dot represents a UK local authority. The solid line is the predicted ‘best fit’ from a regression of local authority percentage change in wages on the local authority change in share of EU immigrants. These are weighted by the sample population in each area. Slope of this line is -0.08 with standard error of 0.15, statistically insignificantly different from zero.

To see if employment and wage prospects for less skilled UK nationals are associated with EU immigration, Figure 13 looks at the change in the NEET rate (‘not in education, employment or training’) for low skilled UK-born, defined as those who left school at the minimum leaving age or younger. There is again no effect of EU immigration on their job prospects. If anything, the relationship is negative – NEET rates fell furthest between 2008 and 2015 in areas where EU immigration rose faster. But the estimate, like all others, is statistically insignificant. Likewise, Figure 14 shows no obvious link between the pay of less skilled UK-born individuals and changes in the local area population of EU nationals over this period.

The Technical Appendix presents a large number of variations of these graphs. For example, we repeat the analysis for other periods such as starting in 2004 when the A8 joined the EU or 2011 when the Eurozone crisis really worsened. We drop London to make sure that the capital is not biasing the relationships. Across all experiments, the results are essentially unchanged: EU immigration does not seem to harm UK workers.

Figure 13: NEET (‘not in education, employment or training’) rates for less skilled UK-born & EU immigration, 2008-2015

Source: CEP analysis of Labour Force Survey.

Notes: Each dot represents a UK local authority. The solid line is the predicted ‘best fit’ from a regression of local authority change in NEET rates for the less skilled on the local authority change in share of EU immigrants. These are weighted by the sample population in each area. Slope of this line is -0.10 with standard error of 0.14, statistically insignificantly different from zero. NEET stands for those ‘not in education, employment or training.’ Less skilled is defined by those who left school at 16 or earlier.

Figure 14: Wage rates for less skilled UK-born & EU immigration

Source: CEP analysis of Labour Force Survey.

Notes: Each dot represents a UK local authority. The solid line is the predicted ‘best fit’ from a regression of local authority percentage changes in the wages of the less skilled on the change in share of EU immigrants. These are weighted by the sample population in each area. Slope of this line is 0.02 with standard error of 0.21, statistically insignificantly different from zero. Less skilled is defined by those who left school at 16 or earlier.

One group that does seem to lose out from new immigration is the stock of other recent arrivals (Manacorda et al, 2011). So although there is no negative effect on UK-born workers, there might be some depressing effects on other immigrants who settled in the UK a few years back.

What of the studies that do find (small) negative wage effects of immigration? Dustmann et al (2013) find small wage losses for those in the bottom 10% of the pay distribution and larger wage gains for those in the middle of the pay ladder as a result of immigration. Their estimates imply that the wave of EU immigration between 2004 and 2015 reduced wages in the bottom decile by 1.03% and raised wages for the median worker by 1.24%. But the areas where the bottom 10% had relatively slow wage growth were places like London. London had big increases in immigration but also had the weakest bite of the rapidly rising minimum wage. Consequently, it is likely that even these small negative effects are overstated by not controlling for the minimum wage effects.

Nickell and Saleheen (2015) find small wage losses for occupations with fast increases in immigration. Their results imply that all EU immigration since 2004 has reduced semi/unskilled service sector wages by only about 0.7% (compared with a 4% increase in the minimum wage over the same period, Centre for European Reform, 2016). But they do not separate wages of the UK-born from immigrant wages as we do, so even their small effects of EU immigration on wages may be coming from its effects on other immigrants. Furthermore, the occupations that lose may be counterbalanced by the occupations that gain in a local area, meaning that the overall effect on the area’s wages is zero, just as we find.

3. What is the Likely Fiscal Impact of Immigration on Public Finances and Public Services?

Public expenditure will be lower on one point since UK taxpayers have not had to finance the childhood schooling and healthcare costs of an immigrant who arrives as an adult as they would do for a UK-born adult. Second, we have documented above that EU immigrants are younger, more likely to work and less likely to be on benefits. While immigrants, like UK nationals, would not be eligible for contributory-related benefits until they have worked full-time for two years, they could be eligible for means-tested benefits should they apply. HMRC estimates that around 6% of tax credit claims are from households that include an EU national in line with the share of EU nationals in the UK (House of Commons, 2014).

After trying to account for the many possible ways in which individuals pay taxes or draw welfare, Dustmann and Frattini (2014) find that EU immigrants made a positive fiscal contribution: they paid more in taxes than they received in welfare payments. For example, A8 immigrants paid in about £15 billion more than they took out in public spending in the decade up to 2011. While this effect may seem small, the longer-run impact could be substantial. The central estimate of the Office for Budget Responsibility (2013) is that the UK’s national debt will be 40 percentage points higher in 2062 if net immigration is reduced to zero from 140,000 per year. By contrast, UK nationals, as a whole, received more in benefits than they paid in taxes, much the same as non-EU immigrants.

Given that EU immigrants are making net contributions, there is no reason to think that they should crowd out any public services. In fact, they are bringing extra resources that could be used to increase spending on local health and education for the UK-born. In other words, reducing EU immigration would generate the need for greater austerity. This would magnify the need for cutbacks caused by the slower growth of the economy due to reduced trade and investment identified by Dhingra et al (2016a, 2016b).

Although the fact that the government has been cutting back on public services cannot therefore be blamed on immigrants, it is still interesting to see whether immigration has led to worse local services.

If immigrants cause social disruption, we would expect this to be reflected in crime rates. Bell et al (2013) find no effect of the big 2004 increase in immigration from East European countries on crime.

Geay et al (2013) find no effect of immigration on aspects of educational attainment and actually some positive effect from Polish children on UK-born pupils. The disadvantage in having English as a second language seems to be outweighed by a stronger immigrant push to work hard at school.

For the NHS, Wadsworth (2013) finds no greater usage of doctors and hospitals by immigrants relative to the UK-born; and Giuntella et al (2015) find little effect on NHS waiting times. These studies do not distinguish between EU and non-EU immigrants, but since EU immigrants are younger than non-EU immigrants, they are less likely to use health services, so the results are likely to be stronger.

There is a general perception that immigrants are given better treatment when applying for social housing. Battiston et al (2013) show that controlling for demographic, economic and regional circumstances, immigrant households are less likely to be in social housing than their UK-born counterparts. Lack of access to social housing has more to do with the falling supply of social housing.

One area where we may be concerned is the effect of immigration on house prices. The UK’s terrible track record of building insufficient houses does mean that the population increase generated by immigrants adds to housing pressure. But the failure to create enough housing supply would be a problem even in the absence of EU immigration. It is rooted in the failure of the UK planning system to make appropriate infrastructure decisions more generally (LSE Growth Commission, 2013; Hilber, 2015). Having said this, the empirical evidence does not find positive effects of immigration on local house prices (Sa, 2015).

4. Could EU Immigration Really be Restricted After Brexit?

At present, only work visas issued to non-EU nationals are restricted. If the UK leaves the EU but wanted to remain a member of the European Free Trade Area or the European Economic Area, it may have to accept unrestricted EU immigration just as all other countries like Norway or Switzerland do. Only a looser trading agreement with higher trade costs would potentially enable the UK to restrict work-related EU immigration in much the same way as non-EU immigration is restricted.

If EU immigration were cut following Brexit, then something like the current visa scheme that applies to non-EU immigrants would have to be adopted to accommodate immigration from the EU. Current rules effectively exclude non-EU immigration from all but graduate jobs and limit numbers arriving on work visas each year to around 55,000, (5,000 in ‘Tier 1’ and 50,000 in ‘Tier 2’).[7] This would mean decisions would have to be taken on whether to expand the current quotas and which skill groups to allow. It is likely then that after Brexit, skilled EU immigration would be cut and there is little realistic prospect of non-EU skilled immigration being expanded.

5. Immigration, Welfare Benefits and the National Living Wage

How much ‘benefit tourism’ from the EU is there? LFS data show that EU immigrants are less likely than UK nationals to claim unemployment benefit, housing benefit or tax credits (Centre for European Reform, 2016).

Another argument made in favour for Brexit was that the big increases in the minimum wage (the National Living Wage) planned over the next four years will draw in many more EU immigrants.[8] It is unclear how big a draw this will be since it depends, in part, on what other countries do to their own wages and on the relative cost of living in each country. Office for Budget Responsibility, (2015), predicts an increase in unemployment of 60,000 which will also be concentrated among the less skilled.

6. Productivity and Immigration

A disadvantage of focusing on outcomes in local areas is that they may miss out on the economy-wide effects of immigration. By enabling specialisation and raising productivity, immigration could also raise national wages.

Migration acts much like trade, as people tend to move to countries where they can be more productive and earn higher incomes. Migrants move from countries with lower productivity (and hence lower wages) to countries with higher productivity: this increases welfare through greater efficiency in labour allocation across the world. Immigrants also fill the gaps in the skill composition of the national workforce. This fosters specialisation, increases productivity, and raises the wages of national workers with complementary skills.  

There is a consensus that there are positive effects of trade and foreign direct investment on UK productivity. But there is somewhat less of a consensus on the effect of immigration on productivity. There is strong evidence of positive effects for more educated immigrants (for example, Ottaviano et al, 2016, for UK service productivity; Ortega and Peri, 2014). Indeed, most studies show insignificant or positive effects of overall immigration.[9] For example, Felbermayr et al (2010) concludes that a 10% increase in the immigrant stock leads to a per capita income gain of 2.2%.

Recent work by Boubtane et al (2015, Table 3) finds that a 50% decrease in the net immigration rate would reduce UK productivity growth by 0.32% per annum. Since EU immigration is half of the current UK total (see Figure 1), cutting EU immigrants to 80,000 per year is likely to shave 0.16% off productivity growth. So about a decade after Brexit, UK GDP per capita will be about 1.6% lower than it would have otherwise been.

Supporters of Brexit argue that economic benefits would flow from bringing EU immigration under the same rules as non-EU immigrants. Boubtane et al (2015) also look at how improving the average skill level of immigrants could increase productivity. To offset the productivity loss from halving EU net immigration, the UK immigration system would have to improve the relative education levels of EU immigrants by about a quarter. Since EU immigrants are already significantly better educated than the UK-born, this may be hard to engineer.

Conclusion

We cannot be precise about the size of the losses from restricting immigration following  Brexit. But we can confidently say that the empirical evidence shows that neither immigration as a whole or EU immigration has had significantly large negative effects on average employment, wages, inequality or public services for the UK-born population. Nor, it should be said, are there large positive effects. It may be that overall neutral labour market effects of immigration disguise changes in the types of jobs UK-individuals take, but this remains an issue for future research.  Any adverse experiences of UK-born workers with regard to jobs and wages are more closely associated with the biggest economic crash for more than 80 years.

At the national level, any falls in EU immigration are likely to lead to lower living standards for the UK-born. This is partly because immigrants help to reduce the deficit: they are more likely to work and pay tax and less likely to use public services as they are younger and better educated than the UK-born. It is also partly due to the positive effects of EU immigrants on productivity.

There is a wide consensus that trade and foreign investment will also fall after Brexit, both of which would reduce UK incomes, Dhingra, Ottaviano, Sampson and Van Reenen (2016a, 2016b). Lower immigration is a third channel that will push UK living standards lower. How large any fall would be depends on how much immigration will fall. This, of course, is unknown.

January 2017

Further reading

Battiston, D., R. Dickens, A. Manning and J. Wadsworth (2013) ‘Immigration and the Access to Social Housing in the UK’, CEP Discussion Paper No. 1264 (http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/dp1264.pdf).

Bell B., F. Fasani and S. Machin (2013) ‘Crime and Immigration: Evidence from Large Immigrant Waves’, Review of Economics and Statistics 95(4): 1278-90.

Boubtane, E., J-C. Dumont and C. Rault (2015) ‘Immigration and Economic Growth in the OECD Countries 1986-2006’ CESIFO Working Paper 5392 (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID2622005_code459177.pdf?abstractid=2622005&mirid=3).

Centre for European Reform (2016) The Economic Consequences of Leaving the EU (https://www.cer.org.uk/publications/archive/report/2016/economic-consequences-leaving-eu-final-report-cer-commission-brexit).

Dhingra, S., G. Ottaviano, T. Sampson and J. Van Reenen (2016a) ‘The Consequences of Brexit for UK Trade and Living Standards’ CEP Brexit Analysis No. 2 (http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/brexit02.pdf).

Dhingra, S., G. Ottaviano, T. Sampson and J. Van Reenen (2016b) ‘The Impact of Brexit on Foreign Investment in the UK’, CEP Brexit Analysis No. 3 (http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/brexit03.pdf).

Dustmann, C., F. Fabbri and I. Preston (2005) ‘The Impact of Immigration on the UK Labour Market’, Economic Journal 115: F324-41.

Dustmann, C., T. Frattini and I. Preston (2013) ‘The Effect of Immigration along the Distribution of Wages’, Review of Economic Studies 80: 145-73.

Dustmann, C. and T. Frattini (2014) ‘The Fiscal Effects of Immigration to the UK.’ Economic Journal 124: F593-643.

Geay, C., S. McNally and S. Telhaj (2013) ‘Non-Native Speakers in the Classroom: What are the Effects on Pupil Performance?’ Economic Journal 123: F281-307.

Felbermayr, G., S. Hiller and D. Sala (2010) ‘Does Immigration Boost per Capita Income?’ Economic Letters 107(2): 177-79.

Giuntella, O., C. Nicodemo and C. Vargas Silva (2015) ‘The Effects of Immigration on NHS Waiting Times’, University of Oxford Working Paper

Hilber, C (2015) ‘UK Housing and Planning Policies’ CEP Election Analysis No. 3 (http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/EA033.pdf).

House of Commons (2014) ‘Statistics on migrants and benefits’, House of Commons Note

LSE Growth Commission (2013) Investing for Prosperity, http://www.lse.ac.uk/researchAndExpertise/units/growthCommission/documents/pdf/LSEGC-Report.pdf

Manacorda, M., A. Manning and J. Wadsworth (2011) ‘The Impact of Immigration on the Structure of Male Wages: Theory and Evidence from Britain’, Journal of the European Economic Association 10: 120-51.

Migration Advisory Committee (2014), ‘Migrants in Low Skilled Work’

(https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/333083/MAC-Migrants_in_low-skilled_work__Full_report_2014.pdf).

Nickell, S. and J. Saleheen (2015) ‘The Impact of Immigration on Occupational Wages: Evidence from Britain’, Bank of England Staff Working paper No. 574

Office for Budget Responsibility (2013) ‘Fiscal Sustainability Report’, July.

Office for Budget Responsibility (2015) ‘Economic and Fiscal Outlook’, July.

ONS (2016) Migration Statistics Quarterly Review

(https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/internationalmigration/bulletins/migrationstatisticsquarterlyreport/february2016).

Ortega F. and G. Peri (2014) ‘Migration, Trade and Income’, Journal of International

Economics 92: 231-51.

Ottaviano, G., G. Peri and G. Wright (2016) ‘Immigration, Trade and Productivity in services’ CEP Discussion Paper 1353 (http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/dp1353.pdf).

Portes, J. (2016a) ‘Immigration, Free Movement and the UK Referendum’, NIESR Review 236.

Portes, J. (2016b) ‘EU Immigration and the UK Labour Market’, NIESR mimeo.

Sa, F., (2015) ‘Immigration and House Prices in the UK’, Economic Journal 125: 1393-1424.

Wadsworth, J. (2013) ‘Mustn’t Grumble: Immigration, Health and Health Service Use in the UK and Germany’, Fiscal Studies 34(1): 55-82.

Wadsworth, J. (2015) ‘Immigration and the UK Labour Market’, CEP Election Analysis No. 1 (http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/EA019.pdf).

Annex: Data sources and definitions

Labour Force Survey (LFS)

Most of this report is based on CEP analysis of the latest individual-level data from Labour Force Survey (LFS). The LFS is the best data source to use covering a representative sample of individuals living in the UK. For example, in 2016, it includes about 90,000 people. The analysis in Figures 8-11 uses the Annual Population Survey (APS) which is based on pooling the LFS quarterly panel over about a year. It has about 350,000 observations a year for the working age population. In the regression lines we weight by the sample population to correct the standard errors for small areas.

With the LFS, it is possible to separate out who is a UK-born individual from those who are EU nationals. This enables us to examine not just the reported trends in the labour market but also to break this down into the UK-born and immigrants.

National Insurance numbers

There is some discrepancy between the number of National Insurance (NI) numbers issued to EU nationals and survey estimates of the EU immigrant population and inflows based on the LFS and International Passenger Survey (IPS) respectively. Anyone should claim a NI number if they are in work, looking to work or wish to be eligible for tax credits or benefits. The NI count is based on these inflows. It has the advantage over the LFS that it is administrative data on the population of NI numbers and therefore not a sample. But compared with the LFS, it will underestimate the flows for EU immigrants who are working but do not have NI numbers or those who are not seeking to work.

A big disadvantage of NI numbers is that individuals keep their NI number when they leave the country. Consequently, we do not know the immigrant outflows using NI numbers. Thus, it is not possible to make a reliable calculation of the net immigration numbers using NI counts. According to the IPS, about 90,000 EU nationals leave the UK each year, taking their NI numbers with them. Another disadvantage of the NI numbers is that an immigrant may have one even if they are only in the UK for a short space of time. It is not simply the immigrants who are in the UK for at least a year.

Consequently, the LFS is a sample of all individuals living in the UK at any one time, so it is a better snapshot of the current immigration position in our view.

Definitions of immigrant status

The LFS asks people whether they were born in the UK and (except where noted otherwise) this forms the basis of our outcomes for the UK-born. For EU immigrants, we use the information on whether someone responded in the LFS that that they were a (non-UK) citizen of the EU. We use EU ‘nationals’ rather than EU-born because any post-Brexit policy would be to restrict people from entering the UK based on their citizenship rather than where they were born. But the results are similar using whether individuals were born in the EU as an immigrant measure rather than an ‘EU national’, so nothing much hinges on this.

Definitions of working age population

In most of the text, we define the working age population as all those aged between 16 and 64. In the figures, we use a shorter age range for women of 16-59 since women retired at 60 for much of the period used in the graphs. Nothing materially changes if we use a higher age for women.

Alternative sources of data on labour market outcomes

As an alternative method to our local analysis, Portes (2016b) correlates constituency-level changes in labour market outcomes with changes in immigration rates based on National Insurance numbers. He uses NOMIS administrative data and ASHE to calculate numbers on Job Seekers Allowance, unemployment and employment rates and hourly wages. Like us, he finds no evidence of significantly negative effects of EU immigration on jobs or wages.

These alternative measures have the advantage over LFS of being administrative data rather than a survey. But these data cannot be used to distinguish the labour market outcomes of the UK-born from immigrants, which is an advantage of our study.

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