The Regional Skills Gap

Something else that has been bothering me for a while is the notion of the 'regional skills gap', as mentioned for example here.

Productivity and Skills for West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) region are one of the biggest challenges for the regional economy. GVA per head in the WMCA is currently at £19,423, nearly £3,500 [less than the UK average] for each of the 4 million WMCA residents leading to a £14bn output gap compared to the national average.

WMCA report that the components of the output gap highlight issues across all the productivity drivers with insufficient skills, too few in employment and the quality of the indigenous WMCA business base.

* Skills: % of number individuals with qualifications at NVQ4+: in the West Midlands Region is 27.6% against a national picture of 34.9%

* Employment: employment rate in the West Midlands Region is 67.2% against a national picture of 71.5%...

It is essential that Education and Business work together, not just through the Corporate Responsibility Agenda and supporting students develop the essential work ready skills but also to:

* Shape academic programmes and content to reflect the needs of regional sectors

*Identify the key growth areas across the region to ensure that training and development reflects the local economy

It's a bit like the notion that you can get house prices down in the South East by building more homes - it only makes sense if you ignore the fact that people can migrate freely within the UK.

If you assume that people growing up in the West Midlands intend to stay there, then sure, train them in things which will get them a job locally. But they won't.

It's a circular problem.

1. Those with the initiative to undertake education and training want to do whatever will earn them the most money, which is unfortunately not the productive sector but the non-productive sector, finance, insurance, real estate, legal and accounting (i.e. little old me).

2. The best paying jobs are in London, which is why, apparently, nearly half of recent graduates from UK universities move to London.

3. So the reason why relatively few people in the West Midlands have NVQ4+ qualifications is not because there's anything wrong with their education system, but because many of those with NVQ4+ qualifications bugger off elsewhere.

4. The less ambitious/less qualified remain in the West Midlands, inevitably, productivity and output declines, exacerbating the effect; businesses do worse, meaning fewer well paying jobs, meaning people are more likely to bugger off.

5. If the West Midlands offers more education and training, that makes it even easier for people to bugger off.

As an aside, Flipchart Rick did a post a while back called "Why a richer Africa means more migrants" explaining that this is effect is observable on an international level.

To paraphrase, few people from really underdeveloped countries emigrate because nobody wants them. Developing countries try to lift themselves with their own boot straps and invest what little surplus they have into improving their education systems - but that makes it easier for their people to emigrate (Filipino nurses, for example) instead of staying and helping grow the economy. So for some decades, this is a net loss to the country. It is not until the economy has developed to the level where there is less incentive for people to move abroad that their economies really benefit; but you can't grow an economy until the better-educated people stay there etc etc in a vicious circle.

Transatlantic LOLZ

From today's Evening Standard:

Americans who fear a Trump victory were today urged to follow the example of singer Will.i.am and plan an escape route to “cheaper” London to take advantage of the plummeting pound.

Also from today's Evening Standard, but I can't find the article online:

The country faces an "exodus" in the wake of the Brexit vote, according to novelist Zadie Smith. The writer, who found fame with her debut novel White Teeth, grew up in London but lives and works in New York...

Project Fear: Now it's getting silly.

The results of a 'survey' carried out by rent seekers OfficeBroker:

OfficeBroker ask 18-34 year old Brits their views on ‘Brexit’ and what they would do if the UK leaves the EU.

• 15.4% of young Brits would consider emigration if UK quits EU, which would result in more than 2 million people leaving the UK*.
• Nearly a third (32%) of 18-34 year olds in the North East of England would also consider leaving the UK.
• Northern Irish more likely to give up on UK if Britain votes to leave the EU as 23.8% of 18-34 year olds polled from NI say they would consider emigration

It is not clear whether they asked them "OK, where would you go?"

Surely, if they plan to emigrate to somewhere else in the EU it will be more difficult to do so post-Brexit, and if they think they'd go somewhere else, what difference would Brexit make?

Either way, the obvious follow-up question is "Why are you still here?"

Fun Online Polls: Romania, Bulgaria and make up your own question

Our wild guesses in last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

How many Bulgarians and Romanians will come to the UK and other western European countries after 1 January 2014?

10,000 - 4%
100,000 - 18%
1,000,000 - 32%
10,000,000 - 4%
All of them - 42%

We shall see. I went for 1 million myself, to the nearest order of magnitude. Perhaps I should have made the question clearer and asked how many you think will leave in the calendar year 2014, but that's sort of what I meant.
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And lo, the to end of year poll...

Make up your own question.

Australia on top form

From the BBC:

A British man is being deported to the UK from Australia, where he has lived for more than 40 years, because of his criminal record.

Clifford Tucker, 47, has been expelled after the Australian government cancelled his visa over a series of crimes, including attempted murder. Officials said the father-of-three posed an "unacceptable risk of harm". His family emigrated when he was six but he never became a citizen...

In 2008, Australia deported a serial paedophile back to the UK at the end of his 12-year jail term. Raymond Horne had reportedly moved from the UK to Queensland in 1952 aged five and started offending in the 60s.

Victimhood Poker

Canada 'racist' for giving white South African asylum

Were we all racist before 1997?

I personally don't have any particularly strong opinions about immigration or racism one way or another, but I have noticed that the minute anybody, such as UKIP, of whom I am a member, mentions 'immigration' they are immediately branded as 'racist', which is a bad thing to be of course (my view being, there is very little that a government to 'combat racism' directly, and all this political correctness just makes it worse). While it is true that racists oppose immigration, I refuse to accept that the reverse automatically holds.

Anyway, if a political party said that they were going to reduce immigration by two-thirds, would they be branded racist? Almost certainly. If a political party said that they were going to reduce immigration to pre-1997 levels, would they be branded racist? Probably. But I simply do not remember people complaining bitterly before 1997 how restrictive the UK's immigration controls were and that we should let more people in; or indeed that Labour's 1997 election campaign promised that net immigration would treble. Which begs the question ... were we all racist before 1997?

Let's look at the official statistics* to put all this in perspective. It's nice to start with emigration of British Citizens (because that's pretty uncontroversial). Gross emigration is the red series and net emigration is the green one (click to enlarge):
Then let's look at immigration from Old Commonwealth (that's the term used in the official statistics, which I assume means Canada, Australia and New Zealand) and the 'EU 15', i.e. Western Europe excl. the UK. Both gross and net immigration appear to have drifted upwards since 1991, but the figures are far lower than the number of British Citizens emigrating, the bulk of whom probably go to these countries, so that's nothing to get excited about either (click to enlarge).
Then there's gross and net immigration from the New Commonwealth (Pakistan, Bangladesh, India plus African countries); the newest ten EU countries (Eastern Europe plus Cyprus and Malta) and 'rest of the world' (i.e. non-Commonwealth Africa and the USA). The figures were low and stable until 1997, and gross immigration has more than doubled and net immigration more than trebled since then (click to enlarge).
You could argue that net immigration from these countries is 'only' twice as much as the net emigration of British Citizens and nothing to worry about in a country of sixty million people.

You could argue that forty per cent of new arrivals from these countries end up in social housing** (the ones who get social housing are less likely to leave again), assuming two immigrants per household (they start having babies once they're here) that makes 50,000 cases per year; with four million units of social housing and a turnover of one-in-twenty units per year only 200,000 households make it to the top of the list every year and thus that a quarter of available social housing goes to immigrants.

You can argue anything you like, to be honest, I'm just trying to put it all in perspective.

* All these charts are based on Table 2.01a taken from 2 Series (TIM calendar year) available at the NSO Website.

** The official version is '60% are in privately rented accommodation' - heck knows how many of these are in privately rented accommodation but getting Housing Benefit, which costs us even more than social housing, but hey.

Readers' letters of the day

Both from The Metro:

I always said that bird 'flu didn't scare me because I am a bloke. But as a male chauvinist pig, I must admit the latest outbreak has got me worried. I think the government is taking things too far by introducing these disease-equality measures.
Bob Harris, Birmingham

and

Why are Britons in Spain 'expats' but Poles in Britan 'immigrants'?
Al, London.

"House prices may fall 30%"

Prof David Blanchflower of the Monetary Policy Committee has finally awoken to the realisation that the most reliable indicator of house price affordability is the ratio of house prices-to-incomes.

No doubt those that refuse to accept it is was a massive credit bubble/asset price bubble will blame any falls on this phenomenom.