Tuesday, September 09, 2008

Migration Advisory Committee

How does a "panel of experts" identify "which sectors of the UK job market are short of workers"!?!

Do they choose the professions that have incurred the highest pay rises in the last five years or use a lottery!?! Pay increases should decline for the chosen ones as the supply of labour increases ceteris paribus.

4 comments:

Brian said...

Using pay increases to determine the scarcity of applicants for particular professions would only work if there was a free market in employment. There is not. Instead the Migration Advisory Committe used the following sources to draw up their list:
http://www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk/aboutus/workingwithus/indbodies/mac/macfirstshortagelist/
Typical of the incompetent, out of touch public sector to ask experts who might know the answers.

Snafu said...

Pay increases should be the only way to determine labour shortages.

Anything else is mere bureaucracy.

Mark Wadsworth said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Mark Wadsworth said...

Ah yes, but think about all the lovely quangos that they'll be able to set up!

Think of the donations that the governing party will be able to elicit from large employers keen to get the jobs they offer on the approved list!

Think of the barriers to entry for small businesses, who will have to pay £1,000s to register as an approved employer (or pay higher wages to UK workers and be unable to compete) - but a drop in the ocean for Big Business!

Think of the impact on UK unemployment and the burden on the taxpayer via the Welfare State when wages are driven down (relative to benefit levels)!

Corporatism at its best! What's not to like?