Job competition rising for young UK workers

Employers in the United Kingdom (UK) are increasingly finding older or more qualified people to fill lower-level jobs.

A survey conducted by the Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development (CIPD) found that fast-growing businesses in the UK are recruiting overqualified candidates who are either returning to the job market, or entering the job market from Europe.

As such, younger native workers are struggling to compete for entry-level jobs.

This is a charged political issue, which threatens to increase hostility towards migrant workers among the native population.

However, the CIPD’s chief executive Peter Cheese commented that: "Many of the negative assumptions about immigration are untrue. Employers are making rational decisions to employ more experienced and qualified workers from overseas […] or are hiring migrants because there are simply not enough applicants in the labor market."

Indeed, evidence suggests that migration improves employment prospects for native workers in the long-term. According to Amelie F. Constant, migrants tend to fill labor shortages or even create jobs. She finds that any negative impacts on native employment are low, and are outweighed by other benefits of migration.

For example, Constant highlights the trend that, by increasing production and demand, migrant workers who enter a labor market cause firms to expand and create new jobs.

The CIPD report also showed that firms who employ migrant workers are more likely to recruit locally and invest in work experience and apprenticeships. Investing more in skills can help firms to yield greater economic returns and boost overall employment, as Robert Lerman shows in his research.

Read the full CIPD report here.

Related articles:
Do migrants take the jobs of native workers? by Amelie F. Constant
Do firms benefit from apprenticeship investments? by Robert Lerman
Do immigrant workers depress the wages of native workers? by Giovanni Peri