Figure . all else constant
Figure . Wages remain constant when labour supply and demand curves shift outward in equal magnitudes
To account for the lack of significant effects of immigration on wages, a growing number of studies propose that immigrant and native workers fill different jobs (Manacorda, Manning, and Wadsworth, 2012; Ottaviano and Peri, 2008; Foged and Peri 2015). With US data, it was shown that among those with secondary school or less education, native belarus rcs data workers tend to be more efficient at communication and cognitive intensive tasks, while foreign-born workers tend to be more efficient at physical and manual intensive tasks. Immigration creates an incentive for natives to transition from occupations intense in physical tasks to those requiring more communication skills. Because communication or cognitive intensive occupations typically pay higher wages, native workers shield themselves from competition and potential decreased wages by specialising in the skills in which they have a comparative linguistic advantage (Peri and Sparber, 2009, p. 136).
Applying quarterly data from the UK Labour Force Survey (LFS), I extended the US study to test the impact of immigration on skill specialisation in Great Britain from 2001 to 2010. The LFS contains detailed data on employment as well as demographic information which allowed for controls. I linked occupations to a US Department of Labor dataset on task intensity to construct the variable of interest—a communication-manual task intensity index. For example, financial managers and directors have the highest communication relative to manual (C/M) intensity (3.62), from dividing a communication intensity of 3.99 by a manual intensity of 1.10 (scores range from a scale of 1 to 5). Elementary construction occupations have the lowest C/M intensity of 0.95, based on communication and manual intensities of 2.64 and 2.77.