Guardian stats

The Grudian leads this morning on a report by the Resolution Foundation (an apparently independent thinktank, 'balanced' in terms of people recruited from different political parties). Shock ! Horror! Restricting immigrants WILL lead to a modest wage rise among poorly-paid 'natives' (RF category). No need to apologise for alleging this was a lie though, because all is not lost -- the overall effect of Brexit will be to depress wages as a whole leaving a net reduction overall. So the remainers are still right overall.

Not only that, but British businesses are likely to go out of business if they are no longer able to pay migrant workers less than natives -- some £2.67 per hour less. What a lovely way to put it. The gap shows that migrant workers are indeed being exploited, but that's good because otherwise firms using sweated labour would go out of business. Oh for the days of the closed shop that enforced union rates (younger readers should ask their parents).

The stats are a bit odd as well. The categories are very broad and one table divides into Accession EU wage levels, Original EU, Natives and Rest of the World. The table gives median figures,slightly better than means but still concealing wide variations They have been adjusted but I don't know how. Nevertheless, the same errors affect all the totals so we still might have a valid comparison. Hence: 'While the wages of British workers are not likely to rise much as a result of a fall in migration, the biggest winners are likely to be those migrants who are already in the UK, particularly people from the countries that joined the EU in 2004'. This assumes wage differentials will remain the same, of course, which ignores occupational differences as we saw -- what if most of those original migrants were located in highly-paid jobs anyway?

However, the data only compares natives to EU originals, and notes that the wages of the latter are above those of natives ( by £1.57 per hour on average) , so the RF is able to argue that EU originals ( ie migrants from the original EU countries already in the UK) will probably continue to enjoy an advantage compared with natives. Whether this is so if we compared people in each occupation, rather than whole populations, is less clear.

What is clear, even from this graph,is that wage levels in EU accession countries ( those hoping to join) are disastrously low, -£2,76 per hour. This is the sum that employers would have to make up if those countries were not permitted to send migrants to the UK --employers would be paying local rates to make that saving, the old softies. I am sure lots more employers wold want to employ such people on those terms.Minimum wage legislation only applies to resident natives, so this would be a great way to get round it.

So natives are not likely to benefit much from restricting immigration -- but they would be much worse off if it continued? The RF also note the effects of things like the financial crisis of 2008:  'However, the effect is small compared to broader economic forces such as the squeeze on pay caused by the financial crisis'. Capitalism depresses wages long term,one way or another,but it can only be of little comfort to someone on a low wage now to hear that things were worse in 2008 and might be again if there is another crisis. Unless the argument is that such crises are more likely out of the EU?

What of future decline? It is based on calculations of 'the economic fallout of the vote to leave the EU if forecasts are remotely right.' Whose forecasts? IS all this inevitable or did it assume old Osborne would still be in charge? The assumption is also made that wage levels are somehow 'natural' or determined only by the market, and even that British businesses would be unable to adjust to higher wages (the RF does consider,only to dismiss,possible changes like automation).