Does immigration make youth unemployment worse?

 

At a London Funders meeting on migrants and refugees in December, Matt Cavanagh of IPPR helped us get to grips with understanding current policy and public attitudes. He was in print and interviewed several times in the last week after a major migration story hit the headlines. Following on from the report by the Migration Advisory Committee on the impact of immigration on unemployment, Matt published short piece on ippr’s website, Does immigration cause unemployment?, highlighting the limits of the MAC's conclusions, and pointing out that the increase in youth unemployment started before any migration boom. Matt discussed this further on BBC News and the article featured in the Financial Times and Guardian. 

 
Matt  says: “Two weeks into the new year, it is clear that immigration will stay at the heart of political debate. Economic downturns tend to heighten concerns about migrants competing for jobs and depressing wages, and spending cuts tend to sharpen resentment over migrants claiming benefits or adding to pressure on public services.  Britain clearly has a major problem with unemployment, including a problem with youth unemployment which predated the financial crisis. But its causes are too complex to be reduced to blaming immigration, just as the effects of immigration on the labour market are too complex to be reduced to endlessly repeated headlines about ‘foreigners taking all the jobs’.”
 

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