Press Association (UK), May 7, 2008
Eastern European immigrants to the UK have a higher employment rate than British citizens, a report reveals.
An average 84% of workers from eight countries that joined the EU in 2004 have jobs—9% higher than the UK-born average, according to Business for New Europe (BNE).
Its report suggests the impact of the EU’s biggest-ever expansion four years ago has benefited the UK and Eastern Europe equally.
Since 2004 just over one million migrant workers have come to Britain from Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Latvia, Slovenia, Slovakia and Estonia.
But nearly half have already emigrated again, leaving an estimated 665,000 people from the eight nations currently living in the UK.
The BNE report contains articles from 22 business leaders in companies including ArcelorMittal, Tesco, Sainsbury, BT Group and Microsoft.
They collectively hail EU expansion as a good thing. Roland Rudd, BNE chairman, said: “This expansion has transformed the accession countries, galvanised the European Union and also presented fresh opportunities for existing member states.
“Britain, and businesses here, are reaping the benefits of an enlarged EU which has created a single market of 500 million consumers.”
The report said very few of the Eastern European migrants claimed state benefits—only 2.4% of those registering for NI numbers since 2004 did so to claim benefits.
And, on average, immigrant workers put in 46 hours a week—four hours longer each week than UK-born workers.
Original article
(Posted on May 8, 2008)
Comments
The headline of the article states that Britons are “reaping benefit of immigration,” but the article only compares white immigrants to native Britons (presumably some of those are black). It does not seem to study non-white immigrants.
It would stand to reason that recent immigrants from Eastern Europe are more likely to be employed than the average “Briton” (again, some black). They specifically immigrated into England to work.
Posted by Question Diversity at 6:23 PM on May 8
Eastern Europeans used to wait in lines for hours to buy things their communist overlords did not have in stock. Now they can buy all the goods they can afford in a semi-capitalist country. Quite a change, ain’t it ? Now they can live like the rest of the civilized world. A friend told me a Russian emigre went to one of our supermarkets for the first time and broke into tears when she saw all the things we had for sale. No wonder the eastern Europeans are working like dogs in England; they have a taste of la dolce vita and they like it.
Posted by N. J. MOE at 6:39 PM on May 8
Big business says E European immigration has been great for the UK. I guess that means they work cheaper than Brits?
Posted by Robert Lindsay at 8:58 PM on May 8
To be fair, the immigrants coming LEGALLY from Eastern Europe are doing the jobs well that many young Brits will not do at all because they can get as much free cash on government benefits. A recent UK TV program showed this when Brit young layabouts were asked on camera in the streets, where they were just congregating doing nothing, if they would like to pick vegetables or fruit for about $11 an hour (legal minimum wage), they all said no as they do not need the cash to lead their lifestyle and certainly not doing manual labour. The problem is the British way where the youths are not encouraged to work when broke, and in fact there are more than a few families now where the parents and the young (in their twenties and thirties) have never worked. They even get free housing.
Apprenticeships that were excellent ways to train the young in a worthwhile trade such as plumber, etc. have fallen away much to the disgust of the older generations who made Britain what it financially is today. The latest sad news is that it is now forecast that there will be more practising Muslims in Britain by 2035 than practising Christians. These are some of the reasons why we are retired in Spain.
Posted by Brian Deller, Marbella, Spain at 2:26 AM on May 9
The pro-immigtation multicultists like to point to the eastern europeans who work hard and are very likely to return home eventually. The uneducated non-working african and pakistani immigrants are here to stay.
Posted by Amsterdamsky at 3:33 AM on May 9
The whole thing is absurdist nonsense - the authors should be ashamed of witing such puerile rubbish, and journalists ashamed of swallowing it.
The point is that the Eastern European migrants are a self-selected group, that by definition, is eager, willing and able so of course they will have a better employment profile than the natives whose employability profile is completely different.
Such an elementary fact of basic statistics, but apparently lost on the ‘clever’ people who write this guff.
Posted by Kenelm Digby at 5:43 AM on May 9
This article conveniently only deals with Eastern European immigration. Most other immigrants have significantly lower employment rates than native Britons - for example fully 80% of Somali immigrants are said to be unemployed.
While Eastern European immigration is far preferable to non-European immigration, I still don’t think it is a good thing. Many Britons are unemployed and on welfare, so importing cheap labour and keeping wages low simply prevents the problem being solved. Britons find it difficult getting jobs that are mainly done by Eastern Europeans now, such as driving buses etc even if they want them, and the depressed wages mean many prefer to be on welfare.
Further, much of the money earned by these immigrants is remitted back to family in Eastern Europe, which doesn’t benefit Britain at all.
Neither does this economic growth translate into per-capita growth which is surely the important thing. It’s very easy to expand an economy by increasing population. We could easily hugely increase our economy by merging with India, but we’d obviously be much poorer per-capita. Therefore this talk of supposed economic growth is rather deceitful.
Traditionally a “labour shortage” was solved by paying more. You’ll always find someone to pick vegetables or drive buses if you pay enough. Now they simply import people willing to work for less. But the other problem is that this solution demands constant immigration. In ten years or so these Poles will have moved onto better things and will no longer want to work for such low wages, so they’ll have to be replaced by yet more and so on and so on. That may be fine for an empty country like Australia, but Britain is getting more and more overcrowded.
Posted by Ed at 10:27 AM on May 9
The subtext of this article is:
“Immigrants work harder than lazy Brits”.
Of course we know this isn’t true, but it’s yet another tactic of the open borders crowd to improve the image of immigrants while bashing indiginous Brits at the same time.
The same exact tactic has been used in the USA.
Posted by Mark Davidson at 10:58 AM on May 9
Australia has already reached its limit of 25 million
Be aware that empty Australia consists mainly of desert
Uk should have ceased taking immigrants 10 yrs ago when it was already overcrowded
As a very wealthy country it ought to have used some of that wealth to lift the economy instead of relying on immigration
Posted by rose at 8:48 PM on May 9
Ed,
The irony of it all is tha a Labour government (Supposedly dedicated to working-class self-interest), has been responsible for the biggest influx of migrant workers in British history - therefore eroding working-class interests in a manner far, far worse than the Tories ever attempted to do!
Meanwhile the Trades Union movement - the labour Party’s creators and paymasters, have observed a strict almost Trappist silence throughout the whole affair.
I really am perplexed.
Posted by Kenelm Digby at 7:22 AM on May 10
