UK Poverty Post

Stirring statistics – misleading the public over foreign workers

The Times today leads with an article stating that the impartial Office of National Statistics has tried to embarrass Gordon Brown over his slogan, ‘British jobs for British workers’ by releasing figures for the employment of foreign-born workers in a separate release to unemployment figures.

Of course, it’s partly The Times itself doing the stirring here. The figures for foreign employment have always been released at the same time as unemployment figures (as pointed out in the article). And these figures represent no fundamental shift. Over the past eleven years we’ve all known that there has been an increase in foreign employment in the UK. The reason it wasn’t headline news is because unemployment figures remained relatively stable over the past decade.

The article depends on the logic that for every foreign worker in employment is another British worker denied employment. That logic is too simplistic and ultimately false. It ignores the growth our economy has undergone due to the EU principles (free movement of goods, services, capital and people) that caused a substantial increase in jobs. It ignores the fact that our working-age population is declining . It ignores the fact that migrants do many jobs that the British public are unwilling or unable to do.

Of course, the immediate conclusion from the article is that these statistics offer further evidence of the issue at hand in the wildcat strikes. That is simply and plainly not the case. The wildcat strikes that began over employment at the Lindsey refinery involved a company that was bringing in foreign labour, facing accusations of undercutting British labour. We have every right to ask for equal and fair access to the job market for all workers, in the way that Derek Simpson pressed Number 10 for British workers’ access on Wednesday . But, again, these incidents shouldn’t lead to a generalised view that for every foreign worker employed, another job opportunity is lost for a British worker.

Understandably these feelings will come to the surface in a time of recession, and the Government should ensure that those facing unemployment have every opportunity to compete for jobs in the EU’s single labour market on an equal basis. But there is also a need to ensure that the most vulnerable of the 3.8 million migrants in our workforce – often those that are doing the jobs we’d rather not – do not suffer discrimination or exploitation by those riled by poorly-judged rhetoric or stirred by poorly-presented statistics.