The Conservative Party pledge to reduce net migration to “the tens of thousands”;
the rise of the UK Independence Party earlier in the decade; and, crucially, the preference to have “greater control” over immigration following the UK’s exit from the bloc.
In light of these far-reaching social and america rcs data economic changes, my PhD investigates how the UK labour market has adjusted to labour supply shocks induced by immigration between 1998 and 2018. To do this I conduct three pieces of original research.
My first paper employs the empirical strategy first utilised by Dustmann et al. (2013) in order to ascertain how immigration has impacted wages at different points along the wage distribution. In the paper, I will extend the original study – which found that immigration depresses wages in the lower part of the wage distribution but raises wages in the upper part – in two ways. First, I will produce separate results for individuals working in tradable and nontradable sectors, with less adverse effects anticipated in the former sector owing to the other adjustments than can take place (outlined below). Second, using statistics produced by Goodwin and Health (2016) in their analysis of the drivers behind the UK’s decision to leave the European Union, I will identify whether the wages of those individuals who are probabilistically likely to have voted “Remain” were affected by immigration differently to the wages of those individuals who are probabilistically likely to have voted “Leave.