The now-enacted will of (some of) the people

[VILLAMARV]

1 hour ago, peterms said:

people will understandably feel they are being lied to.

Or realise they don't matter

[LondonLax]

7 hours ago, HanoiVillan said:

I have put myself in the shoes of MP's who say they want an extension but won't vote for a Corbyn-led government that simply applies for one and then calls an election, and I have concluded that their revealed preference is for a No Deal Brexit over such a government. That's damning, not of Corbyn but of them, and I don't see why people shouldn't say that to them in an attempt to get them to *change* their opinion (even if I suspect such an attempt is doomed). 

You get the same attitude from Corbyn supporters in reverse though (in that it must be Corbyn leading this temporary government and not a centrist politician) so you can understand why we’re in this position. 

[Enda]

6 hours ago, peterms said:

But also see this.

The primary piece of evidence for the claim you present is literally one of the articles I cited.

[peterms]

3 hours ago, Enda said:

The primary piece of evidence for the claim you present is literally one of the articles I cited.

Yes.  I'm not clear from that whether you agree or disagree with the point I made.

[desensitized43]

10 hours ago, peterms said:

But also see this.

One of the features of the whole Brexit debate has been the sense that some people feel they are are being talked down to, the evidence of their own eyes denied.  Some people have found their wages depressed by immigration.  Farm labourers and catering staff are likely to be examples.  I don't know whether the construction trades mentioned earlier are also examples, but they seem to feel they are.

We need to recognise and address these effects, rather than only talking about averages and aggregated data, or else people will understandably feel they are being lied to.

The problem is how do you address people's "feelings"? The evidence has proven that their feeling that their wages are being suppressed isn't factually correct.

[peterms]

3 minutes ago, desensitized43 said:

The problem is how do you address people's "feelings"? The evidence has proven that their feeling that their wages are being suppressed isn't factually correct.

Well, there's feelings, and there's facts.  If people feel their wages have been depressed but they haven't, that's one thing and we should challenge their view, but where they actually have been depressed, then it's not helpful to say they haven't been on the basis that on the whole, over a larger population, that hasn't been the case.  People will see the evidence of their own experience, and see that others are telling them they must be wrong.  Establishing the facts is important, but it should also include addressing the reality for groups of people whose experience may be different, and worse, than the overall picture.

So to say that their feeling that their wages are being suppressed isn't factually correct may be broadly right at the macro level, but not for everyone, everywhere.  I think we should address their feelings, in part, by recognising whether the feelings are based on reality or not.  In some cases, they will be.

There's another aspect of feelings in relation to immigration that is important.  I don't have the references, but I think there's been some work done showing that resistance to immigration is more closely linked not to the amount of immigration, but the perceived rate of change in an area.  This may be partly why anti-immigrant sentiment is higher in areas with some of the lowest rates of immigration, where the pace of change has been slowest and where objectively small changes are seen as more disruptive than many of us would think.

[VILLAMARV]

4 hours ago, desensitized43 said:

The problem is how do you address people's "feelings"? The evidence has proven that their feeling that their wages are being suppressed isn't factually correct.

 

16 hours ago, Enda said:

we find a pattern of effects whereby immigration depresses wages below the 20th percentile of the wage distribution but leads to slight wage increases in the upper part of the wage distribution."

I don't know why these people don't just accept that they are wrong/stupid/unimportant?

[snowychap]

8 minutes ago, VILLAMARV said:

 

I don't know why these people don't just accept that they are wrong/stupid/unimportant?

Because picking one line in order to justify a 'feeling' is a pretty daft way to weigh up evidence.

As per Enda's original post:

17 hours ago, Enda said:

Conclusion: there is limited evidence for EU immigration depressing natives' wages, the effect is somewhere between zero and small.

[VILLAMARV]

4 hours ago, peterms said:

So to say that their feeling that their wages are being suppressed isn't factually correct may be broadly right at the macro level, but not for everyone, everywhere.  I think we should address their feelings, in part, by recognising whether the feelings are based on reality or not.  In some cases, they will be.

Bingo.

Unfortunately though, to admit this would go in some small way to have to admit that demonising huge swathes of the population is probably misplaced. It is much easier to imagine half the people who bothered to take part in the referendum as skinheads, racists and so on than it is to actually accept that parts of our society, i.e. actual human beings, have been marginalised.

 

[VILLAMARV]

Just now, snowychap said:

Because picking one line in order to justify a 'feeling' is a pretty daft way to weigh up evidence.

As per Enda's original post:

 

Conclusion: there is limited evidence for EU immigration depressing natives' wages, the effect is somewhere between zero and small.

my conclusion from those quotes was that that's an interesting way of putting it snowy

somewhere between zero and small doesn't mean doesn't exist.

What is shown is that any effect at the bottom end is offset by the gains at the top

So like peter says, on a macro level, there's nothing to see here, only at the micro level, and at the poorer end of society, it exists and is proven to exist.

[VILLAMARV]

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uctpb21/Cpapers/Review of Economic Studies-2013-Dustmann-145-73.pdf

Here's one of the graphs from one of the papers in Enda's post. I've added a bit of claret and blue to highlight the point being made here.

NB. I dont have the time or inclination to get a closer approximation of the amount of human beings we are talking about, but I have chosen to approximate around 10 million based rather crudely on the ONS equivalised household gross income bands for ENGLAND 2017/2018. Which have 19% of individuals earning below £20,000 a year or 10,148,000 human beings.

With around 22 million people in the 20-60 bracket, and the variance turning positive around the 30th percentile what number of people that equates to that may be effected negatively would be interesting to find out.

(There's about 10 million Celts to distribute into the mix on top of that)

The other thing instantly noticeable when presented in graph form to me is: Look how steep the climb is for people at the bottom. i.e the effect is more severe for those experiencing negative effect at the lowest end of the distribution (the poorest) so while the majority have seen a mediocre increase between 0 and 0.5%, the minority have seen a decrease in wages which at the lowest end is over 1% and we could say the effect is not linear and at the bottom end of the scale the effect of immigration is almost twice the effect size of the majority. In other words, the poorest are more greatly effected by immigration than everybody else.

If people honestly think this shows 'Bob the Builder' to be wrong, or that his observations aren't based on facts and deserve derisory comments about 'feelings', I don't know what to say anymore.

Edited August 18, 2019 by VILLAMARV
tidied it up a bit

[chrisp65]

The advent of minimum wage will mean that there's little chance of any number of immigrants arriving depressing pay at the lower end of the scales.

A cleaner is going to get close to minimum wage. Somebody working in Greggs is going to be a little above minimum wage. Those employers having no immigrant workforce or 99% immigrant workforce will not influence pay rates.

Where I've seen it first hand, is with skilled and specialist staff. We've had quite a number of superbly competent and hard working Spanish architects in our offices.

Basically, in crude terms, they will do for £20k what the 'local' workforce expect to get paid £25k to £30k for doing. They will arrive as a group, all renting one house which their pooled salary between 3, 4 or 5 waged people will easily cover. Typically, the local equivalent lives with a partner and between two of them they're trying to buy a house and two cars. They need more than £20k to make the maths work.

The business I work for has to tender for work, very often it's as simple as lowest quote wins.

Do we employ 6 Spanish and try to cover a wage bill of £120K in our quotes, or go local, and need to cover costs of £180k in our quotes?

That might be a niche example in a niche industry. But you absolutely cannot tell me it's wrong. I travel up and down the country, every office I visit is full of Germans and Spanish, Portugese and Greeks.

[Seat68]

19 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

The advent of minimum wage will mean that there's little chance of any number of immigrants arriving depressing pay at the lower end of the scales.

A cleaner is going to get close to minimum wage. Somebody working in Greggs is going to be a little above minimum wage. Those employers having no immigrant workforce or 99% immigrant workforce will not influence pay rates.

Where I've seen it first hand, is with skilled and specialist staff. We've had quite a number of superbly competent and hard working Spanish architects in our offices.

Basically, in crude terms, they will do for £20k what the 'local' workforce expect to get paid £25k to £30k for doing. They will arrive as a group, all renting one house which their pooled salary between 3, 4 or 5 waged people will easily cover. Typically, the local equivalent lives with a partner and between two of them they're trying to buy a house and two cars. They need more than £20k to make the maths work.

The business I work for has to tender for work, very often it's as simple as lowest quote wins.

Do we employ 6 Spanish and try to cover a wage bill of £120K in our quotes, or go local, and need to cover costs of £180k in our quotes?

That might be a niche example in a niche industry. But you absolutely cannot tell me it's wrong. I travel up and down the country, every office I visit is full of Germans and Spanish, Portugese and Greeks.

My last place, in a small team of 7, 2 were Portuguese. My current contract has again a small team of 10, 2 Greek and 2 Portuguese. I see it more and more often. 

[VILLAMARV]

44 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

The advent of minimum wage will mean that there's little chance of any number of immigrants arriving depressing pay at the lower end of the scales.

A cleaner is going to get close to minimum wage. Somebody working in Greggs is going to be a little above minimum wage. Those employers having no immigrant workforce or 99% immigrant workforce will not influence pay rates.

except of course the NMW does not apply to the self employed, people on employment schemes, people on pre-appreticeship schemes, Student placements/shadowing, Volunteers, family members of employers etc

Going back 15-20 years ago to my time in the hotel trade there were government schemes in place (Which I presume aren't around now I'm not claiming it's still relevant) which absolutely allowed us to play the Polish and Belarusian employees less than their local counterparts. That was the point. (and yes they did have a much better work ethic than the vast majority of the locals in my anecdotal experience)

[Enda]

3 hours ago, VILLAMARV said:

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uctpb21/Cpapers/Review of Economic Studies-2013-Dustmann-145-73.pdf

Here's one of the graphs from one of the papers in Enda's post.

 

...The other thing instantly noticeable when presented in graph form to me is: Look how steep the climb is for people at the bottom. i.e the effect is more severe for those experiencing negative effect at the lowest end of the distribution (the poorest) so while the majority have seen a mediocre increase between 0 and 0.5%, the minority have seen a decrease in wages which at the lowest end is over 1% and 

Not quite, Marv. The dotted lines are confidence bands. The best guess for the effect is the solid line in the middle, which shows a decrease in earnings of about 0.5% right at the bottom, but positive (about 0.5%) for 90% of people/everyone else.

As I said there are other papers where the effects are even closer to zero and this paper is perhaps better known precisely because it is a bit of an outlier, but an outlier where the effect is half a percent for one in six people. This is all subjective, but I’m calling that a small number.

[VILLAMARV]

2 minutes ago, Enda said:

Not quite, Marv. The dotted lines are confidence bands. The best guess for the effect is the solid line in the middle, which shows a decrease in earnings of about 0.5% right at the bottom, but positive (about 0.5%) for 90% of people/everyone else.

As I said there are other papers where the effects are even closer to zero and this paper is perhaps better known precisely because it is a bit of an outlier, but an outlier where the effect is half a percent for one in six people. This is all subjective, but I’m calling that a small number.

fair enough, I'm not arguing (esp. with an economics bod!) that variance equals confidence intervals - but one is still a function of the other. It's a good enough way of representing how certain an average metric is, given the amount of variation observed in the data. As such I think it's fair to point out that the possibility for the effect of immigration as having a negative effect on wages could be as much as the lowest 30th percentile of the distribution. (and yes, all within the confines of accepting the results of this individual report as the basis for the discussion) - 'closer' a poor choice of words in my claret-y word edit (the game was about to start ffs ) perhaps relevant/may have relevance would be better? 'It's not implausable' is a bit wordy but the point I was trying to make.

I can't look at that distribution and ignore that there is evidence for a certain percentage of people (however many they are) where immigration has had a negative effect on their income. Even if overall we can agree that the average is outweighed by the majority experiencing a positive effect. The point here for me was people were taking what you'd posted as proof that people were inventing a narrative based solely on perception and I believe the 3 quotes you quoted were misinterpreted by a few people. (to summarise them, as I understand them, 1. overall when aggregated the effect was minimal, 2. immigrants saw their wages reduced [especially graduates], and 3. natives saw a decrease at the bottom percentiles, which was offset by the gains at the higher percentiles overall)

you're right that it's subjective, and I don't think anyone in this thread is arguing that it's not a small number. Averages are great for finding the average which in this case is close to zero. However that isn't evidence against an individual that has experienced a decrease in wages and no matter how small, is likely to be more consequential to those at the lower percentiles. (not that you were saying this, but others picked it up and ran with it) Basically elaborating on what peter said here:

23 hours ago, peterms said:

One of the features of the whole Brexit debate has been the sense that some people feel they are are being talked down to, the evidence of their own eyes denied.  Some people have found their wages depressed by immigration........We need to recognise and address these effects, rather than only talking about averages and aggregated data, or else people will understandably feel they are being lied to.

If the question is what is the average effect of immigration on wage distribution that graph is a great source. I'm not trying to ascribe any causation here - more hypothesising, but If the bigger question people are struggling with is to find an economic motivation for 17.4m voters to vote leave (and I've noticed i messed the ONS figures up a bit in the OP - I'll go back and edit it now) and we run with the idea or suggestion that the lower 30th percentile may be effected what number of actual people is that? Roughly 32m English people alone are in the 0-60 wage percentile (Going off those equivalised figures I am quoting from the ONS). While the effect on the average wage might be small, the amount of people it may negatively effect is not necessarily therefore inconsequential.

[tinker]

8 hours ago, Seat68 said:

My last place, in a small team of 7, 2 were Portuguese. My current contract has again a small team of 10, 2 Greek and 2 Portuguese. I see it more and more often. 

Where do the UK based workers go, are they unemployed ? Why would employers pick non UK based workers over UK based ones ? 

From what I have seen the Polish and Romanian workers I work with are punctual and hard workers. The Polish ones can be outspoken and don't suffer fools but they are proud and driven. 

I think the leave vote is more about the imbalance within the UK ( South east getting more investment ) than it is about foreigners taking our jobs 

[snowychap]

On 17/08/2019 at 13:02, VILLAMARV said:

somewhere between zero and small doesn't mean doesn't exist.

No, it doesn't - but it doesn't mean that it exists to the amount that people 'feel' or 'see with their own eyes' and it doesn't take in to account all of the other factors that may affect the wages of all people and especially those at the lower/lowest end of the pay scale.

Most people who talk about the issue properly talk about it in some sort of context - whether that's in terms of the estimated effect, whether that's in terms of the other factors which may also have affected people's wages (quite possibly in a much more significant way) and also in terms of the evidence gaps and limitations (as per the page on the Migration Observatory page as linked to in the original post) that are inherent in this type of study and analysis.

The point of all of this is that the concentration on immigration as a reason for people's wages/employment prospects being adversely affected is disproportionate to the effect that it (immigration) is estimated to have had.

The problem is that we have people jumping on a particular bit of data or report or conclusion to support their already held point of view (or so as to support some people's feelings or observations in a specific case) rather than taking from the data what it actually tells us and putting those conclusions in to an overall picture of what has happened, is happening and will happen.

[snowychap]

15 hours ago, VILLAMARV said:

As such I think it's fair to point out that the possibility for the effect of immigration as having a negative effect on wages could be as much as the lowest 30th percentile of the distribution.

It's only fair if you point to the other end of possibilities also, surely?

15 hours ago, VILLAMARV said:

The point here for me was people were taking what you'd posted as proof that people were inventing a narrative based solely on perception

I'm not so sure that you're not doing something quite similar but the other way.

23 hours ago, VILLAMARV said:

If people honestly think this shows 'Bob the Builder' to be wrong, or that his observations aren't based on facts and deserve derisory comments about 'feelings', I don't know what to say anymore.

Bob the builder (I'll go with that as that's whom you've chosen to be the representative for the argument you seem to be wanting to make) doesn't generally come out and say that there are some adverse effects of immigration on wages for those at the lowest end of the pay distribution but rather that immigration keeps wages down (or perhaps something more prosaic like immigration has made me poorer or even immigration makes us - whoever us might actually be - poorer).

Bob the builder doesn't talk about what else might well have had an adverse effect upon wages (in a percentile) because those other things are likely to be much less apparent than immigrants and he'll rarely be looking at the proportionate effects of one variable against another.

It leaves us with the result of there being some, limited data that suggest that there is a small (but statistically pretty insignificant) adverse effect at the lower end of the distribution of pay and this limited evidence being used as a reinforcement of all perceptions, feelings and anecdote of immigrants depressing wages and reducing employment prospects for native-born workers.

Unfortunately, it also definitely helps support the inverted narrative that wages have been depressed by immigrants (and the corollary that wage problems are caused by immigration and immigrants) and leads people to a supposedly obvious (but surely daft) solution to reduce immigration so as to immediately and directly (in the short, medium & long term) benefit the pay levels of the native-born workforce.

Edited August 18, 2019 by snowychap

[Dr_Pangloss]

19 hours ago, Enda said:

Not quite, Marv. The dotted lines are confidence bands. The best guess for the effect is the solid line in the middle, which shows a decrease in earnings of about 0.5% right at the bottom, but positive (about 0.5%) for 90% of people/everyone else.

As I said there are other papers where the effects are even closer to zero and this paper is perhaps better known precisely because it is a bit of an outlier, but an outlier where the effect is half a percent for one in six people. This is all subjective, but I’m calling that a small number.

The coefficients clearly are not statistically significant from around 15th to 30th percentiles since the confidence interval crosses an interval that is positive and negative, so it's very much an open question as to what goes on there. It's negative and most likely significant up until the 15th percentile. But effect sizes are lowish.

Worth pointing out that Instrumental Variables estimation (which I'm assuming is what IV stands for) is wrought with problems as it requires a completely exogenous 'instrument' to be found (i.e. uncorrelated with the error term in the explanatory equation), which is often unlikely. Can't be arsed to read the paper now but will have a look later for general interest.

Edited August 18, 2019 by Dr_Pangloss