Unemployment problem? Let’s import some more!

There are plenty of good reasons to reduce and restrict the very high level of immigration which we see each year. The most obvious reason is that giving out 670,000 National Insurance numbers to foreign nationals each year cannot help but increase our own domestic levels of unemployment, especially among the young and the less well-skilled. But statistics produced by the Equality and Human Rights Commission shows that a large proportion of certain migrant communities are destined to add their numbers to the ranks of the unemployed, and therefore we are allowing those to immigrate who have little hope of benefiting the nation.

The EHCR provides employment statistics for working aged men and women of different ethnicities. We can take the figures for White British men and women as a base line. Between 2006/2008, 79% of White British men of working age were employed. Of course those who were not employed were either unemployed, in education, disabled or unable to work through illness. At the same period, 72% of White British women were employed. Many more women were employed on a part-time basis of course.

Of course many of those migrating to the UK at present are from within the European Union. The EHRC provides the employment figures for those of working age who are in the White Non-British category. Among these migrants, who will include Canadians, Australians and other white Commonwealth migrants, there are also the much larger numbers of European migrants. 83% of men in this group were in employment, while 70% of women in this group are in employment. Whatever we may think about the effects of such migration on the employment prospects of British people, we can at least say that generally speaking members of the White Non-British category, as defined by the EHRC, are working and therefore contributing to some extent to the national economy.

If we consider the Pakistani community, however, we find a different pattern. These statistics are concerned with those of working age, so any disparity is not due to elderly members of any community. In the Pakistani community only 61% of working age males are in employment, while only 26% of Pakistani women are in employment. The Bangladeshi community tells a similar story. Only 61% of Bangladeshi males are employed, whether full-time or part-time, while only 23% of Bangladeshi women are in any employment.

The EHRC report points out that in many different respects the labour participation of Pakistani and Bangladeshi women is very much lower than that of other groups, even for those women who have been born in the UK. The EHRC compares the employment of Pakistani and Bangladeshi men with White British, White Non-British and Indian males and finds that it is very much lower in each case, even when compared to Indian males from the same Asian Sub-continent.

Very conveniently the EHRC also compares the rate of employment between those of different religious backgrounds. Their report says..