MC5 said:
Have you any data for the specific point you raise about London wages in the public sector and inflation over the many years you cite? It's not that I dion't believe you, I'm just interested.
I work in the charitable and voluntary sector and earn just over twelve grand a year (that's before tax), so there's no way I can afford to buy a house.
I did argue that immigration did have an affect on reducing wage growth for some in a post directed at you some time ago, when you stated, without any evidence, that immigration leads to a lowering of wages.
Wages in london are a lot higher!! but never high enough as property inflation is enormous.
yes you are generally right it appears that migration causes, nationally, thru creating growth in a thatcherite fashion, average wage growth. And we agree that it AT LEAST slows wage growth at the bottom. I think there is evidence that here wages are actually reduced sometimes.
anecdotally my wages have gone down consistently for almost 20 years relative to inflation. There has been a public sectorpay freeze for almost all this time with annual rises almost always below inflation.
as for wages actually being reduced? yes e.g local estate cleaners were all on what is called scale 3, that is now about 18k ( this ioncludes what is called inner london weighting).. so in cowboy firms that have many of these contracts we see wages of £14K and even £12K .. this in LONDON FFS .. one company buses in portugese ever day, another relies on pakistani migrants. Local kids do not go for these jobs at these rates.
ok so this is NOT a direct affect of migration. Fundamentally it is spivs looking to maximise profits from contracts. And we all accept this. My point is that WITHOUT this recent migration this would NOT be possible. WITHOUT migration the cowboys would not have been able to get workers at these shit rates. And it is EASIER getting migrants for whom the money is just OK to work, than FORCING locals relucantly into these jobs. And so also unemplyment stays high!
as for figures? There are more but for now, the recent TUC report states in section 4.7
" A more recent independent study, using General Household Survey and
New Earnings Survey data,(40) found that “an increase in the number of
unskilled migrants reduces the wages of unskilled domestic workers. However
the quantitative impact of this increase is small. No discernible impact of
migration is found for skilled native workers.”
40 Migration, Trade and Wages, Alexander Hijzen and Peter Wright, University of Nottingham research paper series, research paper 2005/11