The British paid labour market1

Abstract

Chapter three explores the British paid labour market and more specifically economic migration to the UK and its impact with the message that migrants contribute through taxation and alleviating labour and skills shortages. I discuss existing statistical data on UK’s labour force and its characteristics. This quantitative data is complemented with rich qualitative accounts from recent Polish women migrants to the UK. Different sectors of the economy are explored, in particular agriculture, hospitality, customer services and healthcare. These are said to be most reliant on workforce from the EU. Data on population characteristics is analysed taking into account the fact that it is ageing rapidly as is the rest of Europe. This increases the need for foreign-born labour to take on jobs unpopular with British workers, particularly when the EU labour force is younger and fitter in comparison to UK-born workers. This also suggests that after Brexit the UK is likely to experience issues with staff recruitment and labour shortages in certain areas of the economy. The chapter is supported by extracts from qualitative interviews with women migrants from Poland with the aim to bring in real-life stories from those who took advantage of the right to free movement.