No wonder the Lancet is so worried about migration flows. Biggest brain drain from UK in 50 years - Telegraph (H/t Arnold Kling):
Record numbers of Britons are leaving - many of them doctors, teachers and engineers - in the biggest exodus for almost 50 years.
Skilled professionals, including doctors, are leaving the UK in record numbers
Over a quarter of qualified professionals who have moved abroad had health or education qualifications
There are now 3.247 million British-born people living abroad, of whom more than 1.1 million are highly-skilled university graduates, say the researchers.
More than three quarters of these professionals have settled abroad for more than 10 years, according to the study by the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
No other nation is losing so many qualified people, it points out. Britain has now lost more than one in 10 of its most skilled citizens, while overall only Mexico has had more people emigrate.
I assume this has something to do with the fact that it is very easy for Britons to go to wealthy, English-speaking countries, and also that there's a relative lack of migration opportunities in Britain. If you're American or Australian, you can always pick up and try another city, but in Britain, you mostly move to London or you . . . move to London. This is an exaggeration, of course, but there's nothing like the ability to say, "You know what, things aren't going so well in Boston, so I'm moving to LA." If the economy, or the job opportunities are bad in London, they're probably bad everywhere else in the UK too.
Naturally there's also the fact that Britain's a crowded island where things are very expensive; an engineer can instantly boost his standard of living quite a bit by moving this side of the pond. Standard of living is not everything of course (which is why they aren't all here), but it's something, and people who care about it will move.
I've noticed that the Brits also place a high cultural value on traveling and living abroad. The old imperial spirit?
Apart from the strength of the currency, they've also got the built in advantage that Yanks, at least, think Brits are smart because of the way they talk. They can hold forth at dinner virtually unopposed!
If the economy, or the job opportunities are bad in London, they're probably bad everywhere else in the UK too.
Except that by all accounts the economy and job opportunities are not bad in London. Quite the opposite.
I moved from the UK to the US for the very reason Megan stated (I am one of the uni grads the telegraph is now bemoaning about).
The only US equivalent for understanding the London effect was if you combined the financial center of NYC & Chicago, the media and entertainment of LA, the political punditry of DC, with the old school aspects of Boston and party angle of Miami and put them all in one city.
To be fair if you want to add the technology companies of San Francisco & Seattle areas then you would put this within 1hr of the London metro area.
Besides the real killer is property prices in London, I can get a job but I cant afford to live there.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/fintag/1588334172/
or www.rightmove.co.uk
There needs to be discussion about the upcoming exodus of high-skilled workers when their governments have to significantly raise taxes to pay for welfare for old people.
JBA: Who *can* afford to live there? It always perplexes me, the complaints about living costs. Apparently, *someone* can afford all that. Move out of the way for them!
I'm a Brit living in the US and I wonder how the "counting" is done since I am not registered with the British consulate or anything. Of course that might mean that the problem is even worse. Unlike the US (but like pretty much every other country) I don't have to pay tax or anything in Britain since I don't live there so I don't really have any reason that the British state would know my address or even what country I live in.
Person:. The only people I know who live there fit into 3 categories.
1) bought a while ago and know if they move they cannot afford to come back, generally they were born in London so bought in a 'bad' area as it was there local area and it has since been gentrified. 2) they have no choice as their employment is dependent upon location so they live in a small apartment in an area they don't like (ala most people in NYC) that costs a lot but they can follow their passion or 3) work in investment banking/high end sales (or have mummy & daddy) and can afford a $1.5m place.
The issue to me seems to be that now there are now no areas left to gentrify so the base level of any housing is high.
Paul: Good point I never registered either, there might be an arrangement where the visa granting host country informs the home country of the visa being granted?
Or there is the Inland Revenue form that lets your savings accounts etc pay gross interest when your not going to make the 4k threshold, combine that with absence of a benefit application and that would be a rough guide for 'out of the country'.
You can hardly call an island full of sheep pastures and rape fields full. The cities are crowded because 50 years of policy have been dedicated to preventing them from occupying a greater area.
A much bigger reason for teachers and doctors to move abroad is that those are state monopsonies, and most people in those professions are faced with the option of putting up with governments constant interventions, leaving the profession, or leaving the country.
As for engineers, they are fairly well educated in britain, speak the language of many industrial concerns, and the international language, and start their careers as young, single men.
I note particular elegance of my first sentence.
You're completely right. Count me as another person who's moved from the UK to US for exactly the above reasons.
Two other factors I'd also suggest are the weather and the inherent malaise of living in a country with a sense of declining significance...
I gather the emigration rate has gone up greatly over the last decade or so...so what has changed?
I gather the emigration rate has gone up greatly over the last decade or so...so what has changed?
This all sounds like silly moralizing and thinly veiled nativism to me. If a country has mass immigration of skilled professionals (see Silicon Valley) then we are failing to produce enough skilled workers and our education system is failing us. If we produce too many skilled workers and they move over sees then we are suffering a brain drain and the economy is failing to produce enough jobs for skilled workers. Why does either one of these situations need to be considered a problem? Can't we just accept that some countries have a comparative advantage in education/employment and let the brainy chips fall where they may?
I'm a Brit, living in Britain and IMO there two words that sum up the brain drain. Labour government. Regardless of the supposed facelift of the current Labour party it is a common theme amongst all previous Labour governments. There is no argument that greater investment was needed in 1997 but it has gone too far. We now have a higher tax burden than Germany. It's ridiculous. The government has pulled more and more people into the benefit system including an ever growing proportion of the middle classes. People don't want their hard earned money laundered through Her Majesties Revenue and Customs they'd rather keep a bit more to pay down debt or save.
Isn't there another elephant in the room? I keep reading about social breakdown: the horrible crime rate, the free run of the street the yobs enjoy, the virtual ban on self-defense (latest poster child is that shopkeeper being charged with killing his knife-wielding assailant with the perp's own knife), and on top of that we have the insane blitherings of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Combine that with all the other factors cited above, and I think, "Who wouldn't consider leaving?"
Yes, Kirk, the unmentioned and unmentionable elephant in the room is uncontrolled muslim immigration into Britain combined with muslim religious intolerance, muslim insularity and resistance to assimilation, and muslim violence.
But don't tell anyone.