Migration and business cycles

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 1736236210

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-111544

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Jerome, Harry

Title:: Migration and business cycles

Place of publication:: New York

Publisher:: National Bureau of Economic Research

Year of publication:: 1926

Scope:: 256 S.

Digitisation:: 2020

Collection:: Economics Books

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Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Chapter X. Summary

Collection:: Economics Books

2._ MIGRATION AND BUSINESS CYCLES Furthermore, there is no complete clearing house system for employment; and even if the outgoing stream equals the incoming in volume, the time lost in adjusting the new immigrant to a job aggravates the unemployment situation. The International Aspect. Particularly if the needs of two or more countries—the country or countries of emigration and the country or countries of immigra- tion—are taken into consideration, it becomes evident that mi- gration as it occurs is not, and scarcely can be, a consistently beneficial factor in its relation to cyclical unemployment. We have seen that to a large extent low employment occurs concur- rently in the country of emigration and the country of immigration. In such periods it becomes virtually impossible for migration to ameliorate employment conditions in the one country without ag- gravating them in the other. If the emigrant leaves when industry is slack in his old home, he arrives in his new home when unem- ployment is likewise prevalent; and if he arrives when employment conditions are good, he ordinarily leaves his former home when the opportunities for employment are at their best. Possible Indirect Effect Upon the Severity of Business Cycles. Our analysis would be incomplete if we failed to mention the not inconsiderable probability that the inflow of large numbers of new workers into the United States in times of prosperity has been a factor in increasing the intensity of boom periods and consequently the severity of the subsequent depression. Our analysis is not of a nature to prove directly the relation just suggested; it merely in- dicates the existence in periods of prosperity of a large volume of new additions to the labor supply, which would make possible an intensified expansion of industry and, by tending to keep wages down, render less effective one of the possible checks to such ex- pansion—namely, rising costs of production. A further probable effect of migration which is suggested but not directly demonstrated by the data under examination is the ag- gravation of the turnover in industry, whether immigration is balanced by emigration or not; for it is constantly necessary to fit the new arrivals into jobs vacated by the departing aliens or by native workers crowded into other occupations, aside, of course, from those instances where the new arrivals take up work for which no labor force has previously been organized. “49

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