Britain and the US are poor societies with some very rich people.

[vetran]

UK - sometimes yes, sometimes no, what happened to the prostitute/shoe-cleaner ring that used to do all the banks?

You pay for polishing either way?

[BlasterBates]

As predicted. How were employers keeping pay down since 2004? Oh yes importing cheap workers and not training UK ones, the first part seems to be slowing (note we can expect the government to open the flood gates when the multinationals start complaining).

Wage growth didn't slow down after 2004, as you can see here. The wage growth accelerated slightly after 2004 and slowed down after the financial crisis.

[vetran]

Wage growth didn't slow down after 2004, as you can see here. The wage growth accelerated slightly after 2004 and slowed down after the financial crisis.

ah that would be mean not median then?

https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.u...f-immigration/

As with the impacts on employment and unemployment, several studies have found that effects are different for high vs. low skilled/paid workers. For example, Dustmann et al (2013) find positive effects for most workers but negative effects for the lower paid; they found that a 1 percentage point increase in the ratio of migrants to non-migrants leads to a 0.6% decrease in wages for workers at the 5th earnings percentile and a 0.5% decrease at the 10th percentile. Another study focusing on wage effects at the occupational level found that, in the unskilled and semi-skilled service sector, a 1 percentage point rise in the share of migrants reduced average wages in that occupation by about 0.2% (Nickell and Salaheen 2015).

The MAC (2018) estimated that an increase in the number of EU migrants corresponding to 1% of the UK-born working-age population resulted in a 0.8% decrease in UK-born wages at the 5th and 10th percentiles (i.e. people in the bottom 5-10% of earners), and a 0.6% increase at the 90th percentile (i.e. high earners). In practice, this means that between 1993 and 2017, the total effect of EU migration on the wages of UK-born workers was estimated to be a 4.9% reduction in wages for those at the 10th earnings percentile, a 1.6% reduction at the 25th percentile, a 1.6% increase at the 50th percentile, and a 4.4% increase at the 90th percentile. The calculation of the total impact should be interpreted with caution, however, because the model estimates the short-run response to migration, which is expected to disappear over time (MAC, 2018: 32).

Finally, research suggests that any adverse wage effects of immigration are likely to be greatest for resident workers who are themselves migrants. This is because the skills of new migrants are likely to be closer substitutes for the skills of migrants already employed in the UK than for those of UK-born workers. Manacorda, Manning and Wadsworth (2012) analyse data from 1975-2005 and conclude that the main impact of increased immigration is on the wages of migrants already in the UK.

[jamesbrown]

There's an element of truth to this, of course, the tails are quite far away from the fat portion of the distribution in the US. However, he somewhat undermines his own analysis with that headline, given he's showing that the median (i.e., the number above/below which 50% of people fall) income in the US is basically ahead of everywhere except Norway and Switzerland.

[BlasterBates]

ah that would be mean not median then?

https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.u...f-immigration/

The statistic I showed was the mean but median earnings have risen in a similar way.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentand...ngs/2013-12-12

It doesn't really make much difference.

[BlasterBates]

https://leftfootforward.org/2022/07/uk-workers-set-for-worst-pay-squeeze-in-g7-warns-tuc/

Britain sits at the bottom of the league for pay growth among the world’s seven advanced economies.

Pay growth in Germany, France and Italy is higher than in the UK.