While immigration to Britain remains near record highs, modest reductions in the inflow from the European Union since the Brexit vote has led to bosses increasing pay and drawing more heavily on native workers.
In a brief, comparatively little-publicised report on the behaviour of LinkedIn members published by the Telegraph, the business-oriented social network revealed that the number of users moving from Continental Europe to the United Kingdom has fallen by 30 per cent from 2016, when the British people voted for Brexit, and 2019.
This reduction in foreign labour has been accompanied by around half of employers offering higher pay to prospective workers, to make them more enticing to British workers, with around two-fifths also offering better working hours.
“There is evidence that businesses are responding to the talent shortages by increasing their focus on the workforce already here in the UK,” LinkedIn economist Mariano Mamertino conceded.
“This includes extending their search into sometimes neglected pools of labour – the young, the old and those who’ve left the workforce.”
Brexit: Supermarket Boss Admits EU Migration Used to Keep Wages Down https://t.co/O2d93WEptx
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) February 11, 2019
The damaging impact of mass migration in general, and the Free Movement migration regime in particular, has long been obvious to observers familiar with the basics of supply and demand — but the point is seldom made in Britain’s public space, as a right-leaning Conservative Party which styles itself as “the party of business” tends to accede to its demands for a so-called “flexible workforce”, and the left-leaning Labour opposition increasingly favours ideals of diversity and multiculturalism over its former working-class base.
Some bosses have been perfectly open about the fact that they consider better pay and conditions for workers as a negative, with Lord Rose, chairman of the official Remain campaign during the EU referendum, (in)famously agreeing that wages would rise if Free Movement ended “and that’s not necessarily a good thing.”
Guardian Editor: I’m Voting LEAVE Because The EU Pushes Down Wages https://t.co/5PoJsR4gbH pic.twitter.com/WJOWxyW1ai
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) June 19, 2016
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