Across the West the number of new arrivals is plummeting
Almost wherever you look, you see the same pattern. After an enormous, indeed unprecedented, rise in 2022-23, migration to the rich world is plummeting (see chart 1).
Many politicians, and some economists, argue that high immigration drags down living standards. It depresses wages, the argument goes, and raises the cost of housing.
The early evidence shows little sign of that, however.
Overall wage growth is declining across advanced economies, rather than rising as anti-migration types had expected (see chart 2). The unemployment rate is also inching up.
We have examined American wage data, focusing on occupations where there is a high share of foreign-born workers. Such jobs include drywall installers and janitors. Even as migration has calmed, and competition for these jobs in theory declined, wage growth has weakened.
Developments in the housing market tell a similar story. A meta-analysis by William Cochrane and Jacques Poot, both of the University of Waikato, finds that a 1% increase in the migrant population of a city leads to a 0.5-1% rise in rents.
Yet falling migration is so far not delivering cheaper housing. Rental inflation is still high, at 5% year on year in the rich world, and in recent months has fallen more slowly than overall inflation. In many of the countries where migration is falling fastest, including America and Britain, house prices are nonetheless rising quickly.
Here is a copy of the rest of the article
https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2025/06/22/politicians-slashed-migration-now-they-face-the-consequences
Posted by Naurgul
13 comments
Disregarding the ethical aspect, why would you not accept someone that can work, and is of age. Like it’s literally like having a child, who is already ready to work in 2-5 years. I literally will never understand the people that are against migration. Especially since literally nobody is “from the region of their ancestors” except some people in Africa…
Comparing current levels to record highs is hardly fair. Especially as the graphs show the countries are still not close to pre Covid levels. I don’t think we have had enough time to see the full impact of the record high migration. Most housing markets are still growing because they weren’t prepared for the mass influx and haven’t caught up and while net migrations are down they are are not negative meaning more people are still being added to the pool of those needing housing.
I am reminded of the saying that economic growth based purely on population growths is not worth having. It would be interesting to see how gdp per capita has changed for the countries shown.
As someone from one of the countries that sends the most migrants to the west – GOOD! I’ve long lamented our brain drain, and I hope this will help curtail it. I only hope we can generate enough jobs for them. Ofc they won’t be paid as much, and that’s fine by me. Our diaspora tend to be full of themselves for ‘making it’ abroad. Ours is mostly of the legal, greedy money chasing kind. I look forward to them contributing to their homeland rather than the west.
Hardly enough time has passed to judge the full affects of these efforts as much as I dislike right wing populism’s approach to most domestic policies. Instead of waiting a few months, it’ll probably take years of simmering for the full effects like we saw with Argentina.
I hope this lasts long enough for other folk in western countries with similar housing issues to finally come to an important inclusion; immigrants are not the problem of housing. Its landlords/slumlords, property developers and corporate real estate entities that are the problem.
As the “developed” nations of the world are coming to deal with new economic challenges today – one group has been targeted almost consistently across all these countries, that group is the *other*.
For now, the other are the immigrants. But what happens when all the immigrants are gone? I suspect it will be the next minority group of a country.
It’s a good start. Now let’s keep this going for the next few decades, while also deporting all illegals. And most importantly, make sure that those deported with a criminal history are never allowed to get back (looking at you, UK).
To offset that, increase the quotas for **legal** immigration and invest in proper (mandatory) integration, especially for actual, real refugees (like those who fled from Ukraine).
Shocking news: Immigration is a from a rational view wildly overblown issue that just distracts from actual problems.
In other news, dumb right winger answers comment trying not to be racist by creating plausible deniability while still being racist:
The question of labor competition will always be contentious one, because everyone loves it when other people compete for their attention, but hate when someone shows up and drives down prices on their labor. There’s also a deferred question, paired with declining native birth rates etc. In a long term – would immigrants continue to play by natives’ rules or would it be easier to take over by force? There’s no way to really predict this.
But in the end, I don’t think anyone’s really going to have a choice. Either crash the economy now by slashing the labor availability or keep bringing more exploitable people and hope for the best.
>The early evidence shows little sign of that, however.
>Overall wage growth is declining across advanced economies, rather than rising as anti-migration types had expected (see chart 2). The unemployment rate is also inching up.
Are they claiming that anyone really expected a dramatic increase in these numbers in a short time?
Is this article seriously comparing wage growth from record inflation period to when inflation has cooled? Has the author ever heard of eliminating other variables before making a hypothesis?
It’s okay, Florida already paved the way by relaxing laws on child labor instead after they kicked immigrants out (please don’t ask them where all the people who claimed immigrants are stealing their jobs are). These countries will learn/s
This may well be true but seeing stagnant wage growth and saying ‘this must be because of lower migration’ is a leap.
The end of the excerpt even shows the main cause by mentioning continuously rising prices. Greedy cunts getting greedier.
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