What happens in a country that has insufficient inward migration and a massively declining birth rate (as many, including the UK, are now at risk of having)? The FT has the answer in the case of Japan's skill crisis this morning, where they note:
Take carpenters — essential in a country where a great deal of construction uses wood. Their numbers have more than halved since 2020, while more than 43 per cent of those still working are over 65. Many projects, large and small, are being delayed.
A shortage of bus drivers has caused operators in Tokyo to cut over 200 services.
The military cannot get close to its recruitment targets.
The Foreign Ministry revealed earlier this year that it cannot hire enough Japanese chefs for its embassies.
In some parts of the countryside, home deliveries of certain goods are undertaken by scooter riders in their mid-80s.
There are genuine concerns across industry that companies are going to run into trouble because Japan no longer has enough tax accountants.
That is what happens: the economy threatens to grind to a halt.
AI is not going to solve this.
Nor will migration in the short term in a country with a language that is fiendishly difficult for an outsider to learn.
The reality is that Japan is in a mess as a result. So, too, will we be without serious levels of controlled inward migration into this country.
Forget the thugs, the populists, the racists and the bullies. The reality is that without those coming to the UK from outside, we have no hope of having the skills, the society, the economy, the care, and the well-being we all desire in the future. This is the reality that all those campaigning against migration ignore.
Now, what are we going to do about it, because we have to?
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Not only inward migration; inward investment is also needed on a huge scale. And yet today I read that Starmer is to listen to overseas software companies for his ID card scheme – that will likely cost several tens of billions of pounds, all spent abroad and which the UK Exchequer will not be able to control or recover through taxation and the like.
Bizarre
Not at all bizarre.
Given the number of high-pressure lobbyists working to control what the government is allowed to think or say, it’s entirely predictable.
The only thing that will change this trajectory is the bursting of the “AI” bubble.
It can’t come soon enough.
Clearly mega corporations in the US are finding ways to create new money to “invest” in their datacentres and projects; the amount they’re spending on lobbyists is small change.
Things are likely to get worse in Japan as they have just elected a Thatcher devotee into Government.
It is interesting that the Meloni government in Italy (from the populist right) is now liberalising it’s immigration policy as the worker shortage hits Italy.
Mrs B of Tory Fantasy Land seems to have other ideas. She wants a British ICE and more stop and search. I fail to see how this is different from the Gestapo law of 1936. On a fascism scale this is a 9. She says she is being serious. I believe her.
It is fascism
Heseltine said so too
Agreed, but when you have most of the M.S.M, and a goodly number of politicians, along with their parties, promoting the fallacy that inward migration is the root of most of our troubles, it shows the magnitude of the task.
A seemingly unshakable aim of our political parties is growth!
I ask …
Will the extent of fairy lights on British buildings this year be adequate?
Will our population own a sufficient number of T-shirts?
Is it essential that there will be significantly more cars on our roads? Will the total volume of those cars be impressive?
Can there be no limit to the number of square metres of housing floor space per person?
The identified problem in Japan, and here, is skilled labour.
Second, utility bills are to increase – but higher usage attracts lower unit charges.
The wealthy can never be satisfied which but that is what capitalist advertising aims for. It’s not only advertising. ultra processed food is designed to be addictive. The treatment of obesity – and a range of other maladies – is much more costly than healthy food.
Fourth, it would be wise to conserve raw materials to meet the needs of both current and future populations.
Fifth, control of pollution and waste disposal are worldwide problems.
Then there’s climate change and numerous environmental issues. It is still possible to ameliorate them. Problems better faced than simply denied.
The need for restraint is obvious
Families mostly use the concept of fairness.
Materials, finance and labour need to be better distributed, but with growth as the mantra, wealthy countries cannot all have everything that they think they need.
Rationing was imposed during WW2. As a direct result child health was better in 1945 than it had been in 1939. A ‘Utility’ brand was devised to restrain use of wood for furniture, cloth for garments and other items. I would like to see a ‘utility’ computer that could be used for all the basics and a few other tasks. It could be made available to all secondary school children and the software would not be changed for 5 or 10 years.
Countries like ours are happy to accept migrants with skills in medicine, teaching, building industry proficiencies etc. It would be fairer if, in return, we trained for such professions in some of their countries of origin.
One reason for migration is that remuneration in less developed countries is much lower. How could we compensate their homelands?
To encourage careful use of resources, unit prices water, gas and electricity could be low for basic needs but with escalating prices as more and more is used.
Japan and Korea clearly have a massive problem, with births per 1000 people at 6-7 per year and populations in accelerating decline since 2000. But I am a bit mystified as to why you lump the UK in with them. Our birth rate is above 11 per 1000 people and our population has grown by about 10 million (17%) since 2000. At the same time, our youth unemployment rate (16-24 year olds) has risen to 13.8%. I am sure it is a very complicated question, but these figures do not seem to show that we have a problem of declining numbers. What am I missing?
We are way below replacement rate of 2.1 per women of child bearing age. Currently around 1.4.
Automation will partly address the loss of woodworking skills in Japan. In Europe I have seen factory-fabricated wooden houses erected in 1 day including service connection. In the case of “Those campaigning against migration”, this is just a tactic to gain power – unless they plan to destory the Uk (perhaps they do?) migration will have to continue.
(& a PS: pre-fab wooden houses can have very impressive thermal performance)
Why can’t we make them here Mike?
What I have seen look great
We do.
But it is the third sector doing it, on a very small scale.
I am involved in this, in my neighbourhood. I know these people. It can be scaled up, it could be done elsewhere.
https://wecanmake.org/fieldnotes/new-housing-futures/
Agreed
I’m afraid that this is just yet another example of a tired, intellectually moribund administration unable to apply creative thinking to anything.
Thanks to RobertJ for the link – they have a very good .pdf on wood construction
Thank you RobertJ for the link. Reading about such initiatives gives me hope – if only the community led approach could become seen as mainstream. What a huge amount of work has been put into wecanmake..
Colin Hines has talked in the past about a population policy.
Now its going down and not up, surely its just what we need working out how many migrants we need and ensuring we make the best use of our working age population.
Many years ago a former neighbour talked about his family who came from Southern Italy. After WW2 the British Government sent agents to recruit workers, women went to the NHS & men to the Coal Mines.
There are also large numbers of service men and women recruited from the Commonwealth and of course the Ghurkas so why cant we start ‘recruiting’ abroad with the agreement of the nations we are recruiting from for the people we need?
It was fascinating to hear from a man who had been a Policeman in the Caribbean, one day the Navy turned up recruiting and now here he was on HMS Ocean (I think!) and enjoying every minute of it.
In 2009 I worked for a financial services company, for my sins.
We went to Eastern Europe in search of new employees, which you can’t do now because of Brexit.
It would help if the NHS did not have 6.25 million waiting for treatment.
Not enough tax accountants – that spells certain doom…
We were in Japan last year at my son’s wedding – I now have a Japanese daughter in law, who lives in the UK with him. They do have foreign workers in Japan but it helps to speak/write good Japanese, as my son does and he did an elective spell as a doctor at a hospital there.
You’d never get the impression from Tokyo and other cities that they have a declining population but they now have an incredible 9 million empty houses, about 14% of the housing stock.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/may/01/akyia-houses-why-japan-has-nine-million-empty-homes
A lot of people I know and work with just want to retire, they’ve had enough (me included). To be honest I’d rather be out there getting arrested for supporting Palestine or something, something I really cared about. I did care about social housing but the way it is going, Council’s will run out of money to develop new affordable homes in and around 20-25 years if not sooner.
With wages that can’t keep up, being fleeced for this and that and being ran ragged, I’d quite happily hand over to someone younger to make the most of what is left of the decline of the public sector and give them a chance.
Except that I can’t afford to retire because they screwed around with my pension, used austerity and refused to manage markets and reduce health services.
So the country is paralysed by fear over money – there is not enough for anything apparently so everything sort of stops.
Some questions dangling there for the Japanese: recruiting quality Japanese chefs abroad? And how far can you base your armed forces on foreign recruits? (We welcomed French Foreign Legion kids at our country gate last year who were subsequently sacrificed in Ukraine without being acknowledged as French, so maybe there’s space for some.). And if we’re going to Japanese examples, please include their systems for forming talents in demand. It’s not all about birthrate.
Angela Merkel and Boris Johnson knew what they were doing.
But its not just about numbers.
They need to be deployed.
I’ve Just been reading Torsten Bell “How we get our future Back” which is very long on analysis of the problem . But having taken the reader through all that he reveals that the population already know what has to be done:
improve public services
increase wages and provide a higher standard of living
increase investment
improve polical leadership
provide more affordable , better quality housing.
Unfortunately he is a little light on how that will be achieved.
All hands to the pump is what is required in a crisis.
Racism will not solve anything.
Typical crap neoliberal book then.
I had never seen Torsten Bell’s face till I saw him on the front bench in parliament.
Is the supercilious sneer he has on his face while in there, part of his DNA, or does he have to practice it in the mirror each morning?
I have met him several times. It is always there.
There is apparently, much (hidden) poverty, homelessness and employer exploitation of both indigenous Japanese (working class) people/citizens and (working class) immigrants in Japan:
https://youtube.com/shorts/JNVQ9B_9wiA?si=Biv5Cl0aIaijGjsa
https://youtube.com/shorts/34vemSJtpIo?si=5MaGWJiQ2CEDgVXc
https://youtube.com/shorts/Cv_GXTPkTuA?si=-HbAferDl4Z-mKc3
https://youtu.be/wPcaIL8PFJ4?si=dMc3vFBdO3zKGWcU
https://youtu.be/wGqfg6yVQt4?si=e90w253oSZgcMfaN
* How would higher immigration into Japan, solve these injustices-problems?
The late Guardian journalist, Deborah Orr, once wrote that both left and right wing neoliberal capitalists- depend on constant, high immigration (to keep workers under control, to keep wages down, to suppress the working class).
A common neoliberal catch-cry is “labour shortage/skills shortage”. On closer scrutiny, there isn’t necessarily any labour shortage – but instead a shortage of people who are willing to be exploited, willing to work for a below subsistence, non-living wage.
(“Immigration Is Vital To Neoliberalism – But No Party Will Admit It, by Deborah Orr , The Guardian 2017).
Human migration, emigration, immigration across the planet, has occurred for many thousands of years and humanity has evolved, arguably when it occurred under autonomous conditions: not under elite controlled conditions.
*So, perhaps the underlying question is: “who” do “high” rates of constant, rapid (low skilled, low paid) immigration, really benefit?
A nation’s working class?
Or, a nation’s middle class and upper class (at the expense of /to the detriment of a nation’s working class – across all “races” ethnicities etc.)?
Insights on this question could be very helpful?
There was logic to Orr’s claim when we were enjoying the benefit of a population boom. We aren’t anymore.
Thanks Professor Murphy
Was the UK’s population boom in 2014 due to a high natural birth rate?
Has that declined since then?
Thanks again
No idea
The long term trend is down.
Also, in case it helps discussion from all angles:
Below is considered a more a right-leaning publication in Australia, but they posted an interesting critique of 20 years of high immigration under both left wing and right wing conservative (bipartisan neoliberal) Australian govts:
https://youtu.be/1nFASLT52s4?si=F70BPKk4BgWwcpyB
Not only do “rapid high” rates of human immigration (the main concern is “rapid, high immigration rates” – not immigration per se) apparently have an adverse effect on the natural environment, on animals, their habitats and worsen climate change (wind farms are threatening/ destroying the habitats of endangered species. Green activists are in a bind on “renewable energies”) – “rapid high” immigration props up the financial “ponzi scheme” basis of neoliberal capitalism (aka “economic growth” and “national GDP” and “property prices” “low wages – thanks to unemployment” and “shaming welfare conditions” for the working class poor, etc etc) all while fuelling alarming levels of: economic inequality via limited wealth distribution to elites (eg Thomas Piketty and others).
Less and less wealth that is generated by ‘rapid high’ immigration, is shared with the immiserated, constantly increasing working class population (i.e. the working class consists of both local citizens and immigrant peoples of all races/ethnicities).
This situation might be enabling those like Gary Stevenson, to go on a (bizarre?) “save the middle class” campaign (now international tour) by “using” the working class, almost like a threat or weapon, to scare the middle class, by effectively (or literally) saying : if the middle class don’t demand billionaire/upper class wealth taxation – the middle class (including himself?) will “fall” into the working class (?!)
Gary Stevenson (who seems upper-middle class, wealthy enough to not need any employment in a job) also seems favourable to immigration, and rarely if ever (?) discusses the impact of “rapid, high” immigration on the UK’s “working class”?
Why?
Some scholarship seems to suggest that middle and upper classes may favour rapid high immigration because their economic conditions benefit from it.
By contrast, working class people’s economic conditions tend to be worsened by it.
Wealthier people will (only?) turn anti-immigrant, apparently, when their own more comfortable economic conditions – are threatened by it:
e.g. https://news.uq.edu.au/2020-08-17-wealthy-turn-anti-immigrant-when-their-riches-are-threatened
Hope it all helps.
I think you are missing the point that what is is not what need be.
Thanks Prof Murphy
Do you mean rapid high immigration and simultaneous poverty/low exploitation wages etc, need not be?
(If so, agree. However what can be done to prevent this?)
Thanks again
When we are short of labour prices need not fall.
And we can support low waged labour better in so many ways.
These posts from MSM feel like a politely worded but persistent diversion from the very challenging demography of Japan’s ageing population, and the economic consequences, and the similarly challenging decline in birth rate here in the UK.
Instead we are being invited into lengthy considerations of the apparent dangers of immigration rather than one on the present demographic challenges.
It’s almost as if there is an alternative agenda being pursued.
MSM asks if this “helps”?
It isn’t helping me.
RobertJ
No diversion. These are questions that high rapid immigration opponents push, so they need to be answered, not avoided.
Ongoing avoidance of the urgent issues of poverty, working class exploitation, homelessness – compels these voters to support right-wing parties like Reform, who do address them, by pointing the finger at high, rapid immigration.
People who are desperate and fearful of their survival, don’t have the time, resources and energy to read, consider and debate, the nuances of high level discussions.
These questions are asked generally, on behalf of working class people of all races/ethnicities in all jurisdictions, because presently, desperate/scared working class people are instead manifesting their anguish via nationalist style street protests.
Working class voters (such as African-American citizens in the US) weren’t sufficiently convinced, for example, that Trump’s policies promising to deport illegal immigrants – were “racist”.
They still voted for him.
While immigration policies by right-wing parties might be/or are racist, the problem is that to a fair number of (non-white/white) working class voters in different parts of the world, they don’t see it this way.
Left- wing (non-white/white) academic American critics of the US Democrats (of Harris to Obama) say they refused to listen to the questions and concerns of America’s working class voters of all races/ethnicities: frustrated, their working class voted for Trump.
These questions are thus posted with a genuine aim of trying to help broaden the discussion, so the US situation doesn’t repeat across the world.
If these questions aren’t acceptable for this blog, will note and respect this and cease posting on this forum.
So, what do we do to enlighten those prejudiced against inward moving migrants that welcoming them is what we need to do? Isn’t that the real question? We don’t stop with noting ‘what is’. We ask ‘what is possible?’ And ‘how?’
Prof Murphy,
Do you mean when we have ‘too much’ labour (unemployment), prices (wages) need not fall?
If so, agree:)
(Thought, it could be nice to see property prices fall, for those who can’t afford to buy or rent a clean, safe and secure place to live).
Agree wholeheartedly that support for low waged/unemployed people can be done in much better ways.
There are indeed alternatives.
Yet, do elites (governments, employers, corporations, big business across the spectrum) want people to campaign for ‘alternatives’? They seem happy with the status quo?
Currently, it seems the capitalist/neoliberal capitalist ideology under which most us live, decrees en masse ‘acceptance’ and ‘resilience’ and ‘resignation’ (population despair, depression, hopelessness).
Margareth Thatcher’s famous slogans might need to be countered now?
– TINA: “… there is no alternative….’
(i.e. don’t even think about alternative policies. Yet, what’s a counter narrative to that?)
– ‘there’s no such thing as society’
(i.e. don’t even think about collective organising: you’re all individuals, isolated, on your own. Yet, what’s a counter narrative to that?)
– ‘economics are the method: the object is to change the heart and soul’
(i.e. harsh neoliberal economic govt. policies are about training large numbers of human beings to be: compliant, non-questioning, resilient, hardworking, hardy, obedient and submissive?
Yet – what’s a counter narrative to that?)
*How can we all help (you) to change the predominant neoliberal mindset, neoliberalism’s pervasive and now unquestioned, ‘values-morals of the market’ (see e.g. Jessica Whyte’s research) – and start to put out there (in the face of neoliberal treasury and other economists, especially) new morals, new community values, sp people start to see and say, ‘Yes. There are alternatives’.
Thanks again for this very important and helpful blog.
Last comment/question?
How do we stop neoliberal western countries from exploiting poor (non-white) immigrants from low socio-economic countries?
The phrase heard often from Singapore to Australia to the UK is that low skilled immigrants are needed – to do the low paid, low skilled (manual labour/dirty) jobs, that locals “don’t want to do”.
Alot of affluent people in neoliberal countries are welcoming immigrants with open arms – so long as they accept cheap, low wage conditions.
https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/australia-s-low-skilled-migration-addiction-is-killing-productivity-20250815-p5mn8p
Using poor people from the global south, the East, to do low skilled, low paid labour in the West – also seems racist.
How do we change this too?
Signing off and thank you for this important discussion.
But this stereotype is not true. Many do highly skilled work.
The fact is people of widely different skill sets migrate.
I am not denying many are over skilled for the work they do. That is undeniable. But you are, it seems, stereotyping.
Also: sample articles about “racial capitalism”- the neoliberal western exploitation of immigrants/refugees for labour shortages:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0962629821002353
Colonialism, Migration, Pandemic: The Immutable Evidence that Capitalism Is Racist and Misogynist – Monthly Review https://monthlyreview.org/articles/colonialism-migration-pandemic/
“…racism divides the working class ..minimises our potential to develop a multi-racial movement against capital…”
What point are you trying to make? I have suggested why what was the case may no longer hold true. You ate persisting with analysing what wash.
I think comment post was delayed. Apologies didn’t see your previous post reply until now.
Apologies didn’t see previous post replies until now.
Yes agree not to stereotype.
It can be important for those of us who are subjected to these stereotypes, to name them.
It’s good that your blog helps to name – and dispel stereotypes and myths that underpin neoliberalism.
Thank you.
Apologies, having done more reading on all these issues, can see that am not sufficently informed of all sides of these complex issues to post questions or express opinion-comments. Wish to retract/recount all posts made.
Thank you again for this blog discussion.