Protection of British jobs?

Is this protectionist, or is it common sense? Today’s headlines are all about Ian Duncan Smith’s speech in which he urges British employers to give young unemployed workers in the UK a ‘level playing-field’ and a better chance of getting the jobs which are being created.

If government are spending money on the supply-side policies of better training and schemes to break the cycle of welfare dependency, then this can only work if employers have jobs to offer, and are prepared to offer them to those unemployed UK citizens. But data shows that almost 90% of the 400,000 jobs created in the UK in the past year went to foreign workers. Many of those are from the EU, although not all, and many are high skilled workers who end up doing low-skilled jobs here - which may result in them transferring much of their income back to their country of origin, but depletes the Human Capital resources of that country.

For the politicians this story is closely allied to their respective party’s attitude to immigration, and its impact on the supply of labour. IDS is concerned for his welfare reforms which are intended to prevent the long term unemployed being “lost to dependency and hopelessness”. But the government cannot easily force employers to change their recruitment habits, and perhaps need more focus on why they choose to employ from abroad and finding ways to address that preference, in order to ensure that the demand for UK labour shifts to the right.