Last week, a series of media headlines suggested that immigrants were taking jobs away from British people as the economy enters recovery. These stories were based in part on new ONS statistics, bolstered in some of the papers by reference to a report from MigrationWatch which purported to show that recent immigration to the UK has caused higher unemployment.
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- The relationship between immigration and youth unemployment is positive and significant in the 50 local authorities in England with the highest rates of migration in the period 2003-2009, and in London.
- The relationship becomes stronger and more adverse the higher the rate of immigration. In a sample of those local authorities outside London with the highest rate of immigration, the relationship is very strong (correlation of 0.9), and shows that, on average, for every 1,000 immigrants into these areas, the number of young unemployed rises by around 900.
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