[ggm]

Europe cannot need only highly skilled workers. It's both questionable by fact, and bad economics. In fact Europe has an insatiable desire for all grades of workers, low and high skilled. And there is no harm in recruiting low skilled workers. It's win-win.

It won't worsen the problem. If you want an example, look to your neighbour Britain which desperately lacks lorry drivers, cleaners, fruit pickers and care home staff. This is why they are seeking to recruit nonEU labour: they can't admit they got freedom of movement wrong. (British people don't want to do these jobs)

[UweSchmidt]

The "insatiable desire" for low skilled workers is coming from corporate interests to keep wages low and workers unorganized. We now have a precarious underclass working with no job security and little integration in society, right here in Germany where we had extremely strong worker rights just a few decades ago. Many regular jobs that used to be steady and good to raise a family with are now low paid and temporary. Super convenient and "win-win" for the 'haves' so we look away, as we want a human on a bike to bring us our burrito. If you look closer you see the guy getting 13€ for cleaning the nasty meat factory floors, laid off periodically to skirt labour laws.

This also means that poorer countries in the EU can't be competitive through price as we have our own low-cost sector. Lose-lose really.

We are also on the verge of many automation breakthroughs that will make many low skilled jobs obsolete, and at the same time huge challenges that can only solved by highly skilled people.

[raxxorrax]

Even lorry drivers and especially care demands a lot from you if you come to a new country. You have to learn a lot, not only the language and how things are done in your new home. These are high demands, even if you think the occupation is easy.

Field workers are mostly part-time immigrants in most countries as the work is seasonal. Many that come will return home in winter or will need another occupation. What I want to say is that demands on the labour market are high.

Countries that regarded your suggestions don't have a good looking economy either. Where is this magically economy that imports immigrants in large numbers?

You will just make more jobs untenable by the normal population and it will only get worse, because it will suppress wages further so that no native workers with any prospects will want to work there. This already happened with many jobs, you might want to make sure that this doesn't extend to more industries.

[kichimi]

British people don´t want to be lorry drivers for minimum wage, this is true.

You are not mentioning the elephant in the room, the unwillingness for many companies to pay anything more than poverty level wages.

[ggm]

I am not mentioning it. I can't think of any Western democracy who pays these people well, I don't see it as fundamentally undermining the point.

Of course they should be better paid. I hold a belief kindergarten teachers should be paid more than high school teachers, or at least as much.

If we want to die of lack of sanitation, not paying people to clean up is a good way of getting there faster. And so on: these low pay jobs are anything but unimportant: they're just jobs we don't seem willing (societally) to pay for or do, hence persisting underemployment by less educated and demotivated working classes in europe: intergenerational unemployment is a trap.

[UweSchmidt]

Market mechanisms attract people from poorer countries to do the work for cheap, depressing the wages in the relevant sectors.

Employers, and people in jobs that are currently safe benefit from that (cheap food, cheap construction, cheap service) and therefore "hold beliefs" over how things should be, or why society strangely just doesn't seem willing to pay more...

[kichimi]

It undermines your point on a technicality, there are more than enough qualified lorry drivers in the UK (by the numbers), they just cannot survive on the wages being offered.

Other than that I think we are in agreement.

[rich_sasha]

Lorry drivers in Britain earn substantially better than minimum wage.

Back of the envelope says about £20/hr for an experienced driver. Minimum wage is 8.91 and going up to 9.50 , so HGV driver is about 2x that.

Maybe that’s still too low but far off minimum. Also consider that tax is progressive and you don’t pay much tax on this level of earnings.

[0xfaded]

It's brutal from both sides, consumers are extremely price sensitive and will price out living wages for workers in favor of cheap goods. A transparent example of this is airline tickets, where creature comforts have been progressively traded for cheaper fares.

Record profits seem to occur when there is some monopoly power or other situation that allows companies to keep prices high while still forcing down costs. I think the book "Rentier Capitalism: who owns the economy and who pays for it" does a great job of describing the situation. As a bonus it focuses on the UK.

My opinion is that Europe needs Federalization and Deregularization to remain globally competitive. There is plenty of room for growth (which actually tends to be fueled by immigrants) if the molasses can somehow be dissolved. Doing business in Europe is a royal PITA (imho).

[raxxorrax]

They would also do it for convenience. Look at how much surveillance we put on delivery workers, just because people are overwhelmed with reasonably managing their lives. Nobody informed will want to do this job, it has been completely perverted by "optimization". I would not wish that job on my worst enemy.

The same you be said about public officials and Twitter. You have to be really ambitious to ward off and defend sensible policy against people on the mental level of teenagers.

I don't think Europe needs any of the suggestions because I don't see how this is connected to the problem. The rooms for growth are in the developing countries and they do grow. At least partially.

[rightbyte]

> You are not mentioning the elephant in the room, the unwillingness for many companies to pay anything more than poverty level wages.

You got a second layer on that. The unwillingness to not buy from the lowest bidder.