Thursday, August 25, 2016

Brexit: A Blow to the Low-Paid? [feedly]

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Brexit: A Blow to the Low-Paid?
// Economist's View

Chris Dillow:

Brexit: a blow to the low-paid?: The CBI reported today that manufacturers' business confidence has fallen at its fastest rate since early 2009, causing falls in investment and hiring plans. This corroborates surveys by Deloitte, Markit (pdf), the Institute of Directors and, to a lesser extent the Bank of England* all of which suggest that the Brexit vote will depress economic activity. ...

What worries me is that the pain of this will disproportionately hit the low-paid. A new paper (pdf) from the Minneapolis Fed says:

It is precisely the households at the bottom of the wealth distribution with low savings rates and high propensities to consume out of current income that suffer the largest welfare losses from a severe recession. Further, these losses are much more severe than those sustained by the "average" household.

This is because the low-paid have no financial assets to cushion themselves against job loss and so must suffer either big falls in living standards or resort to high-cost payday lenders whereas the rich have savings and/or access to cheaper credit**. Also, firms faced with uncertainty might well respond by hoarding skilled labour – which is harder to find when needed – and trimming unskilled workers.

Although the coming downturn will probably not be as severe as the 2009 one, I suspect that these mechanisms will still operate. ...

What's more, for now we are only seeing the short-run effect of increased uncertainty. In the long-run, it's possible that by depressing world trade growth, the losers from Brexit will be those in more skilled manufacturing and finance jobs.

For now, though, it might be the low-paid that suffer the most from Brexit. These, though, were more likely (pdf) to have voted Leave. We might ask them Johnny Rotten's famous question: ""Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?"

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