Statistics Chief Karen Dunnell Inflames Row Over Foreign Workers

Foreign workers make up less than 10 percent of the UK employment base. Rather than accept responsibility for a bleak job outlook and problematic financial policies, politicians lambasted release of a statistic that exposes disappearing jobs for citizens in the midst of a campaign on “British jobs for British workers.” UK ministers were chagrined, notes a team of reporters for the Times in London, after a national statistics office revealed unemployment is at a 12-year-high, with the number of foreign workers on the rise and British workers falling, Ministers pointed out that the statistic “risked inflaming tensions in the British workplace” and could be “open to interpretation,” with many of the foreign workers since becoming citizens or holding temporary posts. Release of the statistic prompts other countries to review their foreign work force: about 8 percent in Germany and France and 15 percent in the US. Workers and politicians disgruntled about such statistics must remember that any attempts at limits would invite immediate retaliation and economic disruption. – YaleGlobal

Statistics Chief Karen Dunnell Inflames Row Over Foreign Workers

ONS highlights figures on jobs for immigrants for the first time
Sam Coates
Thursday, February 12, 2009

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