[notanormalnerd]

The EU overall is in a less than reproduction rate. With less than two kinds per woman on average. With the boomer generation going into pension now there are a lot of jobs left unassigned. At the same time people are getting better educated and strive for higher jobs.

The notion that immigrants take away jobs is bullshit that has been fed to you by exactly those right wing shills. It's not the 2000nds anymore. We need so many workers l, especially in those low wage/low skill jobs.

At the same time employing an immigrant is much harder cultural wise that every employer probably picks a local over a immigrant when having the choice.

But feel free to talk to any recruiter.

[weweersdfsd]

In Finland we've been told that there will be a huge shortage of workers since early 2000s or so. Yet it seems like barrier for entry in low-skilled jobs is only rising. In some areas even minimum wage jobs for teenagers require multi-step BS recruiting processes. Unemployment rate is not going down either.

Really at least in this country there is no general worker shortage, except in some skilled fields like healthcare. There are just lots of underpaid, part-time jobs that do not pay enough that you can survive off them - cleaning, food courier, over the phone sales etc. I don't believe creating a new class of underprivileged working poor from migrants is ethical, I believe any job worth doing should pay an adequate wage. It's not state's job to subsidize companies with slave labour. Attracting skilled workers to enter the country is entirely another matter, ones who can actually earn a livable wage benefit the society as a whole.

[collyw]

https://www.infomigrants.net/en/post/33597/germany-twothirds...

[beretguy]

> that has been fed to you

Nobody fed me anything. I used basic logic to come to that conclusion.

[vivekd]

They said that about Canada too. As a result we had a surge in immigration that led to huge jumps in youth unemployment.

If companies are so desperate for workers why are wages stagnant and why are so many people getting ghosted during job interviews and why does it take so many applications to find a job. This doesn't add up.

We have record numbers of women in the workforce basically doubling the number of workers compared to the 50s. But apparently we can't find workers.

And now we're right wing racists because we object to you bringing in people from low income countries to work low skill entry level positions in a proposed system that a little too closely resembles colonial era slave trade.

Meanwhile there's a huge strain on housing prices and infrastructure and social services as we struggle to absorb this influx - why so corporations can have higher profit margins. So GDP can get a little higher.

And these clueless out of touch elites wonder why people are moving to the far right.

[ako]

Prices are dictated by a global purchasing market. This means that salaries cannot grow because otherwise companies wouldn’t make profit, as they have to compete with products built by Chinese companies with much lower salaries.

[vivekd]

This sounds like a race to the bottom where we keep demanding workers accept less and less to compete with poorer and poorer nations - while simultaneously ignoring that economic powerhouses like the US who pay workers relatively well

[ako]

Globalization is exactly that, until there’s global equality of salaries. We’re seeing it at the moment where Chinese cars are taking over the market because they’re better priced than European or American alternatives. To compete they have to move production to Chinese, see for example the large production of teslas in china, or they replace humans by robots…

The biggest problem with free markets is that it’s not really a sustainable system in the sense that with a certain income you can’t afford the things you need provided by people enjoying similar incomes. Hence we need to mass import product from lower income countries, and even local labor needs to be imported from lower income countries. Cleaners from low income countries, construction workers from low income countries.

[vivekd]

I don't buy that idea, an economy full of very poor people who can barely afford anything is not sustainable not at the national level and not at the global level.

Countries with very low wages are also countries with very low productivity (throwing cheap labour instead of technology and expertise at problems)

[ako]

Relationship between low wages and low productivity isn’t true, low wages are enabled by low costs of living. Cheaper employees can be more productive, and more expensive employees aren’t necessarily more productive. Or do you think every software engineer in SF is more productive than software engineers elsewhere?

[steve_gh]

Overall, as the OP says, the key issue is demographic. That doesn't mean that the issues you note don't exist. The pressure on housing is very real, but much of it is due to an ageing population. Certainly in many places there is a lack of a suitable housing mix that enables empty nests to downsize once the kids have left home, but still remain in the same community. So they rattle round in oversized houses, leading to pressure's the housing stock.

[FirmwareBurner]

>Overall, as the OP says, the key issue is demographic.

Here's a weird thought: Maybe the EU could figure out what issues the locals are having preventing them from wanting kids, and fix them, instead of importing more migrants from impoverished nations, and calling it a day.

[hulitu]

You can't ask a politician to think without offering him money. /s