Conservative Manifesto: Immigration and work

“It is right that we want to bring net migration to sustainable levels... because of the impact that uncontrolled migration has on people, particularly at the lower end of the income scale, because it can hold down people’s wages, it can mean a displacement of jobs…”

• Research does suggest immigration reduces the wages of lower-paid workers in the UK, and the extent of this varies from study to study.
• Immigration only has a small impact on average wages overall.
• Immigrant workers in the UK are the most likely to see their wages fall when more new immigrants arrive.
• Studies don’t generally find significant effects on unemployment. The exception they’ve found is during economic downturns, when UK-born workers are more likely to be affected by immigrants from outside the EU.
• We’ve summarised the key studies along with the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford.