Economics 26/12/2009: Commoners Amongst Our Foreigners

Merry Christmas to all and a Happy New Year.

To start off the post-Christmas season on an interesting note, here is a different look at the CSO's data on PPS allocations.
Cumulative PPS allocations over 2002-2008 show clearly the magnitude (absolute and relative) of migration from Poland to Ireland. It is worth highlighting the fact that the number of people moving to Ireland from the countries with strong historical links to this country is smaller than that from Poland, and close to that from the 3 Baltic States. Of course, the relative potential pool of migrants from the historically important destinations for Irish emigrants in the past is of magnitude of 100 times greater than that of the Baltic 3 entire populations.
Total immigration figures are impressive, peaking in 2006 and falling in 2008 to the average of 2004-2005 levels.
Looking at the same in terms of countries, the above graph shows again how dramatic was immigration from Poland relative to other countries. In 2005, tiny Lithuania sent more people into Ireland than any other country save for UK and Poland. However, as credit bubble blossomed back in the Baltics, Lithuanian and Latvian migration started to decline after 2005, as was the case with Slovakia post 2006.
A messy chart above shows several interesting trends in migration from other countries. Nigeria - a clear decline post Michael McDowell-led reforms of the free-for-all asylum processes. Brazil - massive increase between 2004 and 2008. Whatever the reasons might be? Philippines - no dramatic slowdown in inflows, save for 2002-2004 period. In other words, given that the Philippines is the leading country supplying nursing staff to HSE, there is really no evidence here that Filipino nurses stopped coming to Ireland (remember the claims made by the trade unions). There are many other interesting things going on in the chart, so feel free to interpret/speculate.
Some more trends in PPS allocations in 2002-2008 above. As percentage of the total, Poland's weight was still increasing in 2008, relative to all other major destinations sending immigrants to Ireland.
Cumulative allocations as shares of total allocations above. And next, same by broader region:
Here is a funny thing - 3 Baltic states accounted for more allocations in 2004-2006 than the UK, the rest of the EU15, the US and even the rest of the world. Amazing, given these three countries are about 1/100th of the EU27 population. And, given that incomes were raising in these countries at very high rates, why would these three countries attract such a massive migration to Ireland? Perhaps the reason is coincident with the anecdotal evidence that vast majority of migrants from these 3 states were Russian speaking. Of course, if this is true, it would represent a small embarrassment to these countries' leaderships, because it would illustrate dramatically how prosecution of Russian-speaking minorities in these countries was pushing people to emigrate. But, again, this is speculative at this point in time, as we never bothered to ask these people their ethnicity, as opposed to their citizenship.

Now, next, look at the dynamics of allocations of PPS numbers to foreign nationals:
Note the dramatic dynamics for the EU10 - virtually none in 2003, jump in 2004 and on to peaking in 2006. what does it tell us about these workers? Prior to 2004, they had to compete with the rest of non-EU employees for jobs. And they were not very good at it, apparently. Post 2004, they no longer had to face real competition. And they became, overnight, very good at getting jobs. Suspicious? Me too. Just shows how arbitrary the world is out there - your skills, your aptitude, your knowledge - all these matter as a secondary differential at the very best. Your passport is what determines who you are, can be and will be to a greater extent.
Total allocations to foreign nationals above.

Now, on to two very interesting graphs:
The above chart shows that overall, the groups with no employment activity were dominated not by the EU10 citizens, but by the UK, EU15, and US migrants. Why, you might ask? Well, citizens of these countries came to Ireland for many reasons, some of which were simply not available to those from EU10 - retirement would be one, second homes would be another one. In other words, it is not that the citizens of these countries had lower propensity to work in Ireland, they simply were more heterogeneous (age wise and occupation/income wise).
Chart above dispels several myths:

• EU10 citizens propensity to drop out of labour market activities was no more dramatic than that of other major groups of migrants. However, this must be interpreted with care, as the EU10 migrants do not include second home owners or retirees (which makes their drop-out rates higher than average for EU15, UK and US migrants) and they have no restrictions on spouses employment here (which makes their rates of dropping out more significant than those for the rest of the world migrants);
• US migrants have the lowest rate of decline in labour market activities;
• EU10 numbers for 2008 also conceal the fact that many of those migrants probably moved into gray economy (cash payments) and into sub-contracting, both not recorded by PAYE system. This increases the rate of non-participation for these immigrants.
  

So despite a massively different levels of migration from the EU10 over 2004-2008, there is little evidence so far to suggest that these migrants were dramatically different from other groups of migrants. In some areas they were somewhat distinct, but one cannot conclude that these differences were dramatic...

Live Register Details: March 2009

Per my earlier post today, here are some charts and trends for the Non-Irish contingent of the Live Register.
In terms of numbers on Live Register numbers, Accession States (EU27 less EU15) are by far predominant of all Non-Nationals. Some reasons why, apart from the obvious one that there is simply more of them than of other Non-Nationals, are:
(1) These are workers with less tenure (many came after 2004) and thus are cheaper to lay off. They might not be the least productive, but given our daft labour laws according protection by tenure, not merit, they are the first ones to go.
(2) Many of these workers are employed as quasi-skilled - they are still in on--the-job training and/or still developing their language skills.
(3) Obviously, majority were employed in Construction, Hotels and Hospitality, Retail Services - all sectors that experienced the heaviest fall off in employment.
Chart above shows totals of all Non-Irish Nationals against the Irish Nationals. Not much to comment here, except that I would suspect that tenure-adjusted, unemployment rates amongst non-Irish nationals are much closer to the Irish nationals than these numbers suggest.
Finally, the last chart shows monthly rates of growth in Live Register signees. Again, all Accession States (EU27 less EU15) lead in rates of growth and in some cases - Q1 2008 being one example - with massive spikes. These are the signs of who is being let go first in this economy. Notice convergence of all categories to trend in March 2009. This is cyclical - following massive layoffs of January-February 2009 and will not hold in months to come as the next wave of layoffs is already ongoing. The next, most troublesome sub-category is EU15 (ex Irish and UK nationals) - the French, Germans, Italians, Spaniards and so on. These groups were not known to be occupied with 'dirty' work, preferring instead cushy jobs in professions, even public sector, and of course that welfare-heaven - EU jobs. They are being laid-off ahead of 'Others' (which includes Americans, Russians, Ukrainians, Chinese - all the 'rif-ruf' according to our immigration laws). Now, the 'Others' category does not cover students here, who are doing their post-graduate degrees and working part time, but do not qualify for unemployment assistance. Others, as well as the UK nationals are actually holding to their jobs pretty much as well as Irish nationals.

So, see, not all Non-Nationals are identical... an obvious conclusion.

Trade and Unemployment Stats

Trade meltdown
Our latest trade situation is dire (here).

Although “Seasonally adjusted imports fell by 11% in December relative to November
2008 and exports fell by 4%,” in monthly terms things were much worse: “Relative to October 2008, imports fell by 1% in November 2008 while exports fell by 4%.”

So the overall dynamic is that exports are now collapsing at a faster rate than the deterioration in imports.

The reason is simple – imports started to suffer on the back of a much deeper contraction in the economy and this process was exacerbated by the Government-induced pillaging of personal disposable incomes since July 2008 announcement concerning the upcoming Budget 2009 - the first time Messrs Cowen and Lenihan have dipped deeper into our pockets. Exports lagged this process because our main buyers were more resilient to the global economic downturn than we are, because their Governments largely were not so insane as to raise taxes amidst a recession, and because Ireland-based multinationals engaged in a massive exercise to rationalize their taxes – booking more transfer pricing (thus supporting both imports and exports) via Ireland Inc. The chart - taken from CSO's release - shows exactly this timing and trade balance dynamics...Evidence? “The January-November figures for 2008 when compared with those of 2007 show that: Exports decreased from €83,062m to €79,873m (-4%)” with
• Computer equipment exports decreased by 27% (exactly offsetting a 26% decrease in imports in this category, implying very aggressive transfer pricing by the likes of Dell and others),
• Organic chemicals by 10%,
• Vegetables and fruit by 42%,
• Industrial Machinery by 15% and Metalliferous ores by 21%.
• Chemical materials increased by 35%,
• Medical and pharmaceutical products by 12% (imports in this category were up 18%),
• Professional, scientific and controlling apparatus by 30% and
• Petroleum products by 41%.

There is little evidence in the aggregate numbers that Irish exporting companies are suffering from the Sterling devaluation: shipments of goods to Great Britain fell by 5%, while shipments to Switzerland decreased by 22%, the Netherlands by 16%, Germany by 10%, and the Philippines by 49%. Dollar devaluation is not biting either with shipments to the US up by 2%, although most of this is probably due to transfer pricing.

Despite stronger Euro, imports of goods from Great Britain decreased by 7%, China by 18%, the United States by 6%, Japan by 28%, South Korea by 39% and within the Eurozone – from France by 13%, and Germany by 15%. Goods imports from Denmark increased by 50%, the Netherlands by 6%, Poland by 65%, Russia by 73% and Finland by 33%.

Yieeeks!

Unemployment - the bust is getting bustier...
Per QNHS data, also released today (here):

Q4 2008 there were 86,900 or 4.1% fewer people working in Ireland – “the largest annual decrease in employment since the labour force survey was first undertaken in 1975. This compares with an annual decrease in employment of 1.2% in the previous quarter and growth of 3.2% in the year to the fourth quarter of 2007.” Desperate stuff…

The overall employment rate among persons aged 15-64 fell to 65.8% from 69.0% in Q4 2007 with current employment rate running at the level of H1 2004, effectively implying that the last 4.5 years worth of growth have gone up in smoke within a span of less than 1 year.

There were 170,600 persons unemployed in Q4 2008 - an increase of 69,600 (+68.9%) in the year. The total number of persons in the labour force in the fourth quarter of 2008 was 2,222,700 – a decrease of 17,200 or 0.8% over the year. “This is the first annual decline in the size of the labour force since 1989,” says CSO. It is safe to assume that these figures do not include an outflow of foreign and domestic workers from Ireland. Overall, jobs destruction is thus much deeper than the QNHS figures imply.

All age groups showed an increase in unemployment with those aged 25-44 showing the largest increase (+33,500). The latter effect is, of course, due to the idiotic labour laws that imply that for any company it is virtually impossible to lay off older workers. This, in turn, leads to a situation where the productivity of individual workers becomes irrelevant to the decision to lay them off or to keep them on a payroll. The long-term unemployment rate was 1.8% compared to a rate of 1.2% in Q4 2007. The standardized unemployment rate was 7.7% in Q4 2008, up from 6.4% in Q3.

Conclusion:
In a normal democracy, the Government would probably fall on figures like these, but whichever way you spin the figures – Mary Coughlan being the Minister in charge of both Trade and Employment should find some final remnants of grace and tender her resignation.


As a side note, consider figure below:
Per CSO: “There were an estimated 476,100 non-Irish nationals aged 15 years and over in the State in the fourth quarter of 2008. Of these 349,300 were in the labour force, a decrease of 5,400 in the year to Q4 2008. An increase of 49,700 had been recorded in the year to Q4 2007. According to ILO criteria, 316,000 non-Irish nationals were in employment, a decrease of 18,700 over the year. A further 33,300 were unemployed, an increase of 13,300 in the year to Q4 2008. Nationals of the EU accession states showed a decline in employment of 16,800 and an increase in unemployment of 7,500 over the year. The unemployment rate for non-Irish nationals was 9.5% compared with an unemployment rate of 7.3% for Irish nationals.

In the fourth quarter of 2008 non-Irish nationals accounted for over 15% of all persons aged 15 and over in employment. Over 34% of workers in Hotels and restaurants, 18.8% in Other production industries and 16.7% in Wholesale and retail trade sectors were non-Irish nationals. The largest decreases in employment for non-Irish nationals occurred in the Construction (-10,100), Hotels and restaurants (-7,400) and Wholesale and retail trade (-5,100) sectors.” Now, detailed tables in the release show that in fact virtually no foreigners were employed in the public sector (ex health and education) per chart below.

Foreign nationals employment, 1,000s.So the total decline in foreing workers in mployment numbers of 86,900 was fully accounted, per CSO Table A1 as becoming either Unemployed (69,600), or out of the Labour Force (17,200), while 48,500 were Economically Inactive. Any idea how many actually left our shores?