cover image: How is the End of Free Movement Affecting the Low-wage Labour Force in the UK?

20.500.12592/7b9026

How is the End of Free Movement Affecting the Low-wage Labour Force in the UK?

15 Aug 2022

In addition to the change in eligibility to come to the UK, the end of free movement changes the rights that migrant workers in low-wage jobs enjoy. [...] Is the end of free movement responsible for labour shortages in the UK? Brexit and the pandemic have together had a significant impact on the shape of the migrant workforce in the UK, especially in low-wage jobs where EU workers have been overrepresented over the past decade (Sumption and Fernandez-Reino, 2018). [...] UK PAGE 7 REPORT: How is the End of Free Movement Affecting the Low-wage Labour Force in the UK? Figure 5 Is Brexit the cause of the tight labour market? Many high-income economies are currently experiencing high vacancy rates during the recovery from the pandemic, which suggests that the end of free movement is by no means the only cause (Duval et al, 2022). [...] What are the implications for immigration policy? It is still too early to fully assess the impacts of the end of free movement and the introduction of the new immigration system. [...] As noted above, the main long-run impact in the long term of restricting the growth in the low- wage labour force by ending free movement likely to be that the industry composition of the economy will be slightly different.2 Analysis of the impacts of ending free movement has suggested that the economic effects on aggregate measures such as GDP per capita are likely to be small (MAC, 2018 2020; Po.
Pages
24
Published in
United Kingdom