Equating English Football to London’s Labor Market?
Man and boys playing soccer. Photo attributed to kahunapalej.
By Alexa Wong, Global Paradigm Fellow in England
Having recently won re-election to be London’s mayor, Boris Johnson has continued his weekly column for the Telegraph paper. In his return, he discusses the primacy of reaching a solution to the woes of the London job market. While broader British policies attempt to tackle the issue of illegal immigration and take on a stricter stance on student visas and regulations, Johnson suggests the need to encourage both the legal immigration of highly skilled workers and the restructuring the general labor market.
The issues of illegal immigration, national unemployment, and outsourced jobs resonate close to the experience of many US citizens. In London, too, immigration policy remains a highly charged issue, perhaps even more so-- the cosmopolitan character of the city cannot be ignored. A 2005 survey of the city found that over 300 languages are spoken there, and London has residents from every nation of the former Commonwealth. It appears that Mayor Johnson’s stance on immigration will be one of the major issues to set the tone of his upcoming term. He acknowledges appropriately the benefits of maintaining a global economy and subsequent labor force supplied from across the world. Moreover, he highlights the complexities of London’s overall job market and the causes of its strain, invoking a football metaphor: regardless of a player’s nationality, his talent is what employs him and enhances the caliber of the English Premier League, the nation’s most competitive team.
While Johnson’s editorial contains allure, at the core the mayor is simply working his powers of political persuasion and ambiguity. He avoids targeting the corporations employing a significant number of immigrants and allows those hoping for a greater crackdown on immigration to stay optimistic. According to Johnson, London will witness the creation of hundreds of thousands more jobs. The next step is ensuring that “native” Londoners are not out of work; in particular he calls for an investigation of why younger native citizens are unemployed disproportionately to immigrant workers.
Herein lies the crux of the issue, which appears to be the pattern among job markets across the world. Low-skilled immigrant workers increase the labor supply for jobs that used to be guaranteed to less-educated British citizens. This reduction in blue-collar and service jobs has profoundly affected the economy as a whole, especially among those lacking higher education and used to depend on such jobs. So the new migrants are not the source of labor market pains for all UK citizens, but their presence does affect the less educated and skilled populace. For highly trained workers-- immigrant or native-- wages and experience dictate the employer’s choice, and jobs are there for those with 21st century talents. Perhaps, then, Johnson will realize that the issue revolves less around immigration and more around the recession economy and spending on education as the culprits for why unemployed young Londoners suffer from being less competitive candidates.