The effects of Brexit and migration on pay are negligible compared with the effects of deregulation and the global financial crash, writes Dr Martin O’Brien. Plus letters from Simon West, Ian Arnott, Elizabeth Pearson and Ekkehard Kopp
Larry Elliott (So what’s so wrong with labour shortages driving up low wages?’, 29 August) doesn’t acknowledge that there are upwards wage pressures everywhere from Germany to Singapore and from Norway to America – in other words, in places that didn’t have Brexit. Moreover, moribund wage growth afflicted all of the advanced economies following the global financial crisis, not just the UK.
Second, it is true that migration correlated with a negative effect on low-paid occupations. However, that effect is tightly contextualised in terms of numbers of new occupational entrants and is consistently reported as being small. Compared to the effects of the financial crisis, the immigrant effect is very small indeed – as all the research shows. Perhaps tackling the underlying causes of low pay in tight labour markets rather than celebrating the removal of workers for being here in the wrong numbers might be more productive.
