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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Chapter

Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Chapter X. Summary

Collection:: Economics Books

SUMMARY Summary. In brief, whatever may be the basic causes of migration, there is a close relation between the cyclical oscillations of employment and those of immigration and emigration, and a moderately close re- semblance in the respective seasonal fluctuations, with considerable reason to believe that this similarity, particularly in the cyclical oscillations, is due to a sensitiveness of migration to employment conditions. With reference to the extent to which migration is responsible for seasonal unemployment, the facts presented in the preceding chapter lead us to be cautious in stating the general tendency. Prior to the Great War, the distribution of net migration was moderately well adjusted to seasonal changes in employment in those industries in which the newly arrived immigrants most fre- quently engaged. Hence, unless the availability of immigrant labor accounts in part for the development of seasonal tendencies in production—a point which cannot be proved, or at least has not been proved, by our method of analysis—it is not clear that un- restricted immigration materially aggravated the seasonal variations in unemployment. However, after the introduction of the quota principle of restrie- tion, with provisions which tend to modify the seasonal movement in immigration, it would appear that although the flow of immigrants is reduced in volume its distribution by months is now less likely than formerly to be well adjusted to the seasonal variations in employment. As to cyclical fluctuations in unemployment, it would appear that, directly at least, migration is probably not a primary cause of such variations in unemployment; and that in some instances it is an ameliorative influence, in that in limited portions of depression periods it is withdrawing more workers than it is contributing. More frequently, however, it is a contributory factor to the evils of unemployment. This conclusion is based in part upon the fact that the timing of migration changes to cyclical changes in em- ployment is imperfect; and secondly, upon the fact that the peaks and troughs of industrial activity frequently coincide in the countries of immigration and of emigration, in which case migration cannot be well adjusted to conditions in both countries. Also, although a decline in employment is usually followed by a decline in immigra- tion, the incoming stream does not dry up entirely, and in those portions of depression periods in which there is a net immieration— 243

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