Migration has rocketed worldwide, driven by warfare, climate change, rapid population growth in lower-income countries and the relative ease of travel ... But as well as greater supply, there has been rising demand. The birth rate in all rich countries ... has fallen well below the replacement rate at which population levels are stable ... As a result, more and more countries are becoming dependent on migrant labour to sustain shrinking and ageing workforces.
Germany will need annual net migration of close to 300,000 until 2040 to sustain its labour force. In the US, immigrants account for about one in five healthcare workers and the sector faced acute staff shortages even before the second Trump administration. In Britain, the care sector emerged from lockdown with record vacancies – and a commensurate need for migrant workers.
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Those who ... see mass migration as an existential threat to national identity, struggle to explain how their countries will manage declining populations without bringing in more working-age adults. One popular idea on the radical right – that the need could be negated through schemes to boost native fertility – runs up against the failure of any country to do so, including those like Hungary, which has put significant resources into trying. Policies such as improved childcare, cash payments to parents and better access to housing can make a small difference at the margins but cannot overcome more fundamental changes in gender roles, or the cultural impact of the internet, which means young people spend much less time socialising in person.
Some anti-immigration activists will admit they prefer the idea of gradual economic decay to solving the population problem through migration, but no government can realistically let standards of living go into permanent decline. Voters may worry about immigration, but that doesn’t mean they won’t blame the government if they can’t pay their bills and there is no one to look after their ageing parents.
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There have been some attempts to tighten up routes for legal migration at the margins: in the UK, most international students are no longer allowed to bring dependents, and the salary required to be given a visa has gone up (though not for NHS workers). But net migration is still expected to be about 200,000-300,000 for the foreseeable future – well above historic levels.
Even countries with radical right governments are attempting the same strategy. In Italy, Giorgia Meloni has pushed EU colleagues to go further on reducing irregular migration, while quietly pushing through two increases in the number of visas available for non-EU workers (alongside already high levels of migration from eastern Europe). [In the UK], the new Reform administration in Kent recently wrote to the home secretary complaining that new rules preventing care homes from hiring from abroad would “leave providers on a cliff edge”. In opposition, it is easy to use immigrants as a punching bag but, when governing, the trade-offs become more apparent.
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It is going to become increasingly difficult to maintain the levels of economic migration required to sustain labour markets facing demographic decline. To date, demand to come to rich countries has been so strong that it has been possible for governments to allow in the necessary numbers but then treat them badly to play to domestic audiences.
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Demand for migrants is going to keep growing, owing to falling birthrates worldwide, while supply shrinks for the same reason. To date, emigration hasn’t been a big political issue in most countries, with high numbers leaving because birth rates have been so high. But falling birth rates across middle-income countries, as well as rich ones, are changing the dynamic. Global births peaked in 2016. Currently, only 94 countries are above replacement rate, and that’s projected to fall to 49 by 2050. India has seen more emigration than any other country over the past few decades, but its birth rate fell below replacement in 2019 and continues to drop.
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We’re starting to see how this could play out in the healthcare sector, where global demand for migrants is insatiable. The UK and US have been reliant on international recruitment for a while: last year, 40% of nurses recruited into the NHS were non-EU citizens. Now other countries, such as Germany, that have traditionally relied on home-grown staff, are also becoming more reliant on international recruitment. The effect has been to put huge pressure on healthcare systems in middle-income countries and attempts to stem the flow.
Earlier this year, Nigeria announced new rules that require newly trained nurses to work in the country for two years before being eligible to work abroad. Given Nigeria is the third-largest provider of international nurses to the NHS, this may well have a knock-on effect on the ability of hospital trusts here to recruit. Ghana and South Africa have introduced similar rules, as have some Indian states (India is the largest provider of NHS nurses).
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This is a pattern that will become more prevalent across a wider range of skilled professions, as middle-income countries seek to keep more of their graduates and drops in birth rates become more widespread.
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How rich states manage this tension will be a key political dynamic over the coming decades. Combining tacit support for economic migration with rhetorical hostility will not be sustainable – both because that hostility will mean losing out in the global competition for workers, but also because voters who object to migration can see right through it, undermining trust further.
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