UK labour supply inquiry: committee to hear evidence on migration and international comparisons

At 3pm the committee will hear from:

• Madeleine Sumption, Migration Advisory Committee Member and Director, Migration Observatory
• Professor Jonathan Portes, Professor of Economics and Public Policy, King’s College London.

At 4pm the committee will hear from:

• Eliza Forsythe, Assistant Professor, School of Labor and Employment Relations, University of Illinois
• Tony Wilson, Director, Institute for Employment Studies
• Werner Eichhorst, Coordinator of Labor Market and Social Policy in Europe, IZA Institute of Labor Economics.

The meeting will be held in Committee Room 4 of the House of Lords. It will also be streamed live on Parliament TV.

Topics the committee is likely to cover in these sessions include:

• Whether there has been changes in the rate of migration and its impact on the labour force.
• How the UK visa system works and the overall trends since the EU referendum.
• How non-EU migrants compare with EU migrants in terms of their relationship with the labour market.
• Recent trends in the labour supply in USA, Germany and UK since the start of the pandemic.
• The extent to which the UK is an outlier among developed economies in experiencing growing economic inactivity.
• The impact of long-term sickness, especially long-Covid, in European and American labour markets.

More about this inquiry

Vacancies are still at record levels and above pre-pandemic levels in all industries. The committee is seeking to understand the main causes of the reduction in the size of the labour force, and it will explore data on the types of people who have left the labour market.

The committee is also interested in what differences exist between labour market trends in the UK compared with those in other developed countries.

The committee’s work can be followed on its website and via Twitter.