Washington remains divided over allowing more foreign workers while global rivals lower barriers to ease persistent labour shortages
7 min
Migration to affluent countries is at record highs, and some nations short of workers are overcoming political opposition to open their borders even wider, hoping to fill jobs and ease inflation.
Government actions to attract foreign nationals for skilled and unskilled jobs have spread from Germany to Japan and include countries with longtime immigration restrictions and some with a populist antipathy to streams of foreign workers.
The U.S. remains an outlier. Hundreds of thousands of migrant workers have arrived through back channels, but the country isn’t openly welcoming more legal workers, despite the tight labor market. That hesitancy carries economic costs, including persistent worker shortages and wage inflation, according to economists and some U.S. officials.
Unemployment is at a record low 4.8% across the 38 largely affluent countries that make up the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. These and other nations report a long list of open positions from truck drivers to baggage handlers to miners.
Beyond being needed to fill pandemic-driven labor shortages, migrant workers are in demand to fill the gap left by retiring baby boomers and declining populations, economists and Western officials say. “The labor forces of richer countries are hollowing out,” said Michael A. Clemens, an economics professor at George Mason University.
Governments across affluent countries are balancing the economic need for more workers with the political reality that very few electorates are enthusiastic about high levels of immigration.
In Europe and North America, the working-age population is expected to decline from 730 million to 680 million over the next two decades, according to United Nations estimates. Such places as South Korea and Taiwan stand to lose more than half their workforce over the coming decades. The working-age population in sub-Saharan Africa, meanwhile, will increase by 700 million by 2050, according to U.N. projections; in Latin America and the Caribbean, the U.N. estimated an increase of 40 million by midcentury.
For many wealthier countries, labor surpluses abroad are hard to resist. The global labor imbalance, in effect, is driving foreign workers into the open arms of nations that need them.
Around five million more people moved to affluent countries last year than left them, up 80% from pre pandemic levels, according to a Wall Street Journal data analysis. The Journal examined 10 countries that received most of the migration, including the U.S., Germany, the U.K., Canada, Australia and Spain. Migration experts say it is the highest number ever reported. That total includes about two million refugees from Ukraine. Even excluding that surge, net migration was significantly higher than 2019 levels, according to the data.
Germany is rewriting immigration laws to bring in more college graduates as well as blue-collar workers under a new points-based system. Points will be awarded based on age—younger people receive more—educational qualifications, work experience and German-language competency. Canada announced plans late last year to take in nearly 1.5 million more migrants by 2025. Western Australia recently sent a delegation to the U.K. and Ireland to recruit tens of thousands of workers, including police, mechanics and plumbers.
South Korea plans to admit 110,000 low-skill foreign workers this year to work in industries such as farming and manufacturing, up nearly 60% from last year’s quota. Japan, which is opening new visa paths for high-skilled foreign workers, announced in April plans to offer blue-collar workers—including those at factories and farms—a chance to extend their stay and even bring their families. Both countries have been longtime skeptics of immigration.
Spain amended its laws last year to allow more foreign workers from outside the European Union to fill blue-collar jobs left open by a shrinking working-age population. José Luis Escrivá Belmonte, Spain’s minister of inclusion, social security and migration, estimated that his country will need to add 300,000 foreign workers a year to keep the economy running and support the national pension system.
Spain’s unemployment rate is 13% and has been around that level or higher for 15 years. Mr. Escrivá said unemployed Spaniards tended to be age 50 or older and not necessarily suited to fill open jobs needed in sectors such as agriculture, construction or film production.
José Antonio Moreno Díaz, an official at Spain’s Trade Union Confederation of Workers’ Commissions, which represents over a million workers, including migrants, said training opportunities for higher-paying jobs should be offered to citizens. “We are not against bringing in real needed foreign workers,” he said. “But let’s pay attention to unemployed people in the Spanish labor market.”
Opponents in various countries warn of citizens losing jobs to outsiders willing to work for less money. Some say the cost of providing newcomers with healthcare, education and other public services outweighs the economic benefits, especially for low-skill workers who pay little in taxes.
Others argue that such immigration is a quick fix that slows economies in the long term.
“Labor shortages are very healthy,” said Mikal Skuterud, an economics professor at University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. “They force employers to use existing workers more efficiently and invest in technology, that’s all good stuff.”
Finland and Greece are building hundreds of miles of new land barriers to prevent illegal migrant crossings. In Italy and Sweden, voters recently elected governments with a more restrictive approach to immigration, and both are planning reforms to slow both legal and illegal migrant arrivals.
The U.S. hasn’t made any significant immigration reforms in 33 years, and the last serious attempt in Congress dates back a decade or more. Few issues are so politically divisive in Washington, making any chance of a policy overhaul seem unlikely, according to immigration experts.
Despite restrictive immigration policies, migrants seeking work in the U.S. are finding jobs more quickly and at higher pay than at any time in recent memory. Tens of thousands of people crossed into the U.S. from Mexico illegally and were arrested over the past 10 days, while some 20,000 were detected by various forms of surveillance but not caught, the U.S. Border Patrol chief wrote on Twitter.
In the U.S., the limit on H-1B visas available for highly skilled workers has changed little since 1990. Presidential administrations over the past 15 years have clamped down on illegal border crossings without creating new legal immigration pathways, prompting more urgent discussions about immigration policy and the labor shortage, said Giovanni Peri, chairman of the economics department at the University of California, Davis where he directs the Global Migration Center, whose recent research favours more immigration.
U.S. Border Patrol agents made a record 2.2 million arrests along the Mexican border in the 2022 fiscal year, up from 1.65 million arrests in 2021. The migrant crossings were driven, in part, “because the U.S. economy is screaming out for their labor,” said Mr. Clemens, the economist.
New channels have recently opened. More than 300,000 Ukrainian refugees entered the U.S. since Russia invaded Ukraine last year, many through a Biden administration program called Uniting for Ukraine. That number is more than the total number of refugees admitted into the U.S. through legal channels over the previous seven years. In North Dakota, energy companies are tapping Ukrainians to fill jobs in the Bakken oil fields.
Around 450,000 migrant refugee workers—largely from Afghanistan, Ukraine, and Latin America—entered the U.S. legally in 2021 and 2022 and are working under temporary government protections in industries with labor shortages, according to an April report by FWD.us, a pro-immigration think tank. Those workers are estimated to have filled about a quarter of total job openings this year in such industries as construction, food services and manufacturing, the report said.
The labor shortage is pushing inflation in affluent countries where employers, competing for workers, are raising wages to hire and keep them. “I do think more migrant workers would reduce the inflation rate,” said Spencer Cox, the Republican governor of Utah, which has a 2.4% unemployment rate, slimmer than even the U.S. rate of 3.4%.
Gov. Cox and Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb of Indiana, which is also short of workers, want to rally other governors in a long-shot proposal for Congress to give states a measure of authority over legal immigration.
The U.S. and other countries are divided about how to limit illegal immigration while keeping a pathway for a flow of potential employees for various industries. A plurality of Americans think the U.S. should admit fewer migrants, according to recent Gallup polls.
To gather bipartisan support for increased legal immigration, especially for skilled workers, Utah Gov. Cox said the government needs to demonstrate better control over the U.S.-Mexico border. “Scenes of tens of thousands of migrants streaming across the border in a way that could threaten national security,” he said, “make it harder to have that higher-level conversation.”
Mathias Senn, a butcher in Germany’s wealthy Black Forest region, posted job ads in newspapers and online, seeking to replace four of 10 employees who were preparing to retire. “There were no interested people,” he said. “Nothing at all.”
Last year, Mr. Senn hired an apprentice from India, taking advantage of a new law that allowed businesses to hire unskilled people from outside the EU. Local business associations are helping hundreds more workers arrive from India. India’s unemployment rate is around 8%, compared with about 3% in Germany.
Mr. Senn’s 22-year-old apprentice, Rajakumar Bheemappa Lamani, makes about 940 euros a month, around $1,020, while learning the ropes. Mr. Lamani said it was difficult to save money because of the high cost of living, but he hoped to stay.
Germany needs to add around half a million immigrants a year in the next decades as the baby boomer era draws to a close, said Herbert Brücker, head of migration research at the Institute for Employment Research, a federal agency. “We have in Germany about two million vacancies, an absolute peak historically,” he said.
Young people in Germany aren’t interested in manual work, said Joachim Lederer, a butcher in Weil am Rhein, a town of 30,000 by Germany’s borders with France and Switzerland. His son, who studied and worked at the University of California, Berkeley, and Cornell, is a professor of mathematical statistics.
Mr. Lederer recently hired an apprentice from India who had studied computer science, and he has anointed a young Italian immigrant to take over the butcher shop when the time comes.
The U.K. added a record half-million new migrants in the year ended June 2022, even after exiting the EU, which made it more difficult for EU citizens to obtain visas.
Alan Manning, former chair of the U.K. Migration Advisory Committee, which consults government officials on immigration policy, said people accepted the idea of allowing foreign workers if their skills are needed. But some “get anxious about immigration when they perceive it to be out of control,” he said.
Amjed Nizam, a Sri Lankan design engineer trained in Hong Kong, looked for an exit overseas when Sri Lanka’s economy imploded last year. The 29-year-old discovered a new U.K. program that grants two-year work visas to recent graduates of top universities, even without a job offer.
U.K. authorities approved Mr. Nizam’s online application within three weeks, he said. He arrived late last year, found a job with a broadcasting company and now lives in London with his wife and daughter.
Paul Papalia, a government minister in Western Australia, said the region desperately needs workers in both public and private sectors to serve the mining industry, which is booming from global demand for battery-powered vehicles that rely on locally mined lithium, cobalt and nickel.
Mr. Papalia led a delegation in March to pubs and other spots in the U.K. to try to lure as many as 30,000 British workers with the prospect of better salaries and sunny weather. Nearly 70,000 job seekers expressed interest so far, including 1,100 applications to join the police force, he said.
Only about a fifth of Australians supported more immigration, according to a poll last year by the Lowy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank in Sydney. Mr. Papalia said voters in his state nonetheless support his recruitment efforts. “They ask, ‘Where are the people who are going to help us build our house?’ ”
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What a quarter-million dollars gets you in the western capital.
Alexandre de Betak and his wife are focusing on their most personal project yet.
Some designer handbags like the Hermès Kelly have implied power. But can a purse alone really get you a restaurant table—or even a job?
6 min
LIKE MARVEL VILLAINS, most fashion writers have origin stories. Mine began with a navy nylon Prada purse, salvaged from a Boston thrift store when I was a teen in the 1990s. Scuffed with black streaks and sagging, it was terribly beat-up. But I saw it as a golden ticket to a future, chicer self. No longer a screechy suburban theatre kid, I would revamp myself as sophisticated, arch, even aloof. The bag, I reasoned, would lead the way.
That fall, I slung it against my shoulder like a shotgun and marched into school, where a girl far more interesting than I was called out, “Hey, cool bag.” After feigning apathy —“I don’t know, you could use a Sharpie on a lunch bag and it would look the same”—we became friends. She introduced me to a former classmate who worked at a magazine. That woman helped me get an internship, which led to a job.
Twenty years later, I still wonder how big of a role that Prada purse played in my future—and whether designer bags can function as a silent partner in our success. Branded luxury bags took off in 1957, when Grace Kelly posed with an Hermès bag in Life magazine. (Hermès renamed that bag “the Kelly” in 1973.) The term “status bag” was popularised in 1990 by Gaile Robinson in the Los Angeles Times, describing any purse that projects social or economic power. Not surprisingly, these accessories are costly. Kelly bags cost over $10,000; ditto Chanel’s 11.22 handbag. Some bags by Louis Vuitton and Dior command similar price points. The cost isn’t repelling customers—both brands reported revenue surges in 2023. But isn’t there something dusty about the idea that a branded bag carries meaning along with your phone and wallet? How much status can a status bag deliver in 2024?
Quite a lot, said Daniel Langer, a business professor at Pepperdine University and the CEO of Équité, a Swiss luxury consulting firm. Beginning in 2007, Langer showed a series of photo portraits to hundreds of people across Europe, Asia and the U.S., then asked them 60 questions. Those pictured carrying a luxury handbag were seen as “more attractive, more intelligent, more interesting,” he said. The conclusion was “so ridiculous” to Langer that he repeated the studies several times over the next decade and a half. The results were always the same: “Purchasing a ‘status bag’ will prepare you to be more successful in your social actions. That is the data.”
Intrigued, I gathered various Very Important Purses—I borrowed some from friends, and others from brands—to see if they could elevate my station with the same unspoken oomph as a “Pride and Prejudice” suitor.
First, I took Alaïa’s Le Teckel bag—a narrow purse resembling an elegant flute case and carried by actress Margot Robbie—to New York’s Carlyle Hotel on a Saturday night. The line for the famous Bemelmans Bar stretched to the fire exit. “Can I get a table right away?” I asked the host, holding out my bag like a passport before an international flight. “It’s very busy,” he said in hushed tones. “But come sit. A table should open soon.” I sank into one of the Carlyle’s lush red sofas and sipped a martini while waiting—a much nicer way to kill 30 minutes than slumped against a lobby wall.
Wondering if this was a one-time thing, I called up Desta, the mononymous “culture director” (read: gatekeeper) who has worked for Manhattan celebrity hide-outs like Chapel Bar and Boom, the Standard Hotel bar that hosts the Met Gala’s official after party. “Sure, we pay attention to bags,” he said. “Not too long ago at Veronika,” the Park Avenue restaurant where Desta also steered the social ship, “we had one table left. A woman had a Saint Laurent bag from the Hedi Era,” he said, referencing Hedi Slimane , the brand’s revered designer from 2012 to 2016. “I said, ‘Give her the table. She appreciates style. She’ll appreciate this place.’”
Some say a status bag can open professional doors, too. Cleo Capital founder Sarah Kunst, who lives between San Francisco and London, notes that in private-equity circles, these accessories can act as a quick head-nod in introductory situations. Kunst says that especially as a Black woman, she found a designer bag to be “almost like armour” at the beginning of her career. “You put it on, and if you’re walking into a work event or a happy hour where you need to network, it can help you fit in immediately.” She cites Chanel flap bags made from the brand’s signature quilted leather and stamped with a double-C logo as an industry favourite. “People love to talk about them. They’ll say, ‘Ohhh, I love your bag,’ in a low voice.” They talk to you, said Kunst, “like you’re a tiger.”
For high-stakes jobs that rely on commissions—sports agents or sales reps, for instance—a fancy handbag can help establish credibility. “It says, ‘I’m succeeding at my job,’” said Mary Bonnet, vice president of the Oppenheim Group, the California real-estate firm at the centre of Netflix reality show “Selling Sunset.” As a new real-estate agent in her 20s, Bonnet brought a fake designer bag to a meeting. To her horror, a potential buyer had the real thing. “I work in an industry where trust is important, and there I was being inauthentic. That was a real lesson.” Now Bonnet rotates several (real) Saint Laurent and Chanel bags, but notes that a super-expensive purse could alienate some clients. “I don’t think I’d walk into [some client homes] with a giant Hermès bag.”
Hermès bags are supposedly the apex predator of purses. But I didn’t feel invincible when I strapped a Kelly bag around my chest like a pebbled-leather ammo belt. The dun-brown purse cost $11,800, a sum that prompted my boyfriend to ask if I needed a bodyguard. Shaking with “is this insured?” anxiety, I walked into a showing for an $8.5 million apartment steps from Central Park. I made it through the door but was soon stopped by a gruff real-estate agent asking if I had an appointment. No, but I had an Hermès bag? Alas, it wasn’t enough. The gleaming black door closed in my face.
“What went wrong?” I asked Dafna Goor, a London Business School professor who studies the psychology behind luxury purchases. “You felt nervous,” she replied. “That always makes others uncomfortable, especially in a high stakes situation,” like an open house with jittery agents. Goor said recognisable bags from Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior are also often faked, which can lead to suspicion if not paired with “other signals of wealth.”
“You can’t just treat a bag as a backstage pass,” said Jess Graves, who runs the shopping Substack the Love List. Graves says bags are more of a secret code shared between potential connections. “I’ve been in line for coffee and a woman will see my Margaux [from the Row] and go, ‘Oh, I know that bag.’ Then we’ll chat.” Graves moved from Atlanta to Manhattan in 2023, and says she’s made some new, local friends thanks to these “bag chats.”
I had my own bag chat that night, when I brought Khaite’s Olivia—a slim crescent of shiny maroon leather—to a house party thrown by a rock star I’d never met. In fact I knew hardly any guests, but as I stood in the kitchen, a woman in vintage Chanel pointed to my bag and asked, “How did you get that colour? It’s sold out!” Before I could tell her my name, she told me the make and model of my purse. Then she laughed about her ex-boss, a tech billionaire, and encouraged me to buy some cryptocurrency. The token I picked surged nearly 30% in about a week. Now I was onto something—a status bag that might bring not just status, but an actual market return.
Thanks to their prominence on social media, certain bags have gained favour among Gen Zers. “TikTok and Instagram make some luxury items even more visible and more desirable to young people,” said Goor. I experienced this firsthand on a stormy Saturday morning, when a girl in a college hoodie pointed at my Miu Miu Wander bag as I puddle-hopped through downtown New York. The piglet-pink purse is a TikTok favourite seen on young stars like Sydney Sweeney and Hailey Bieber. “Your bag is everything!” yelled the girl from the crosswalk. “Thanks, can I have your umbrella?” I shouted back. She laughed and left. My Wander had made a splash—but it couldn’t keep me dry. I ran to the subway, soaked. The bag looked even better wet.
Everyone loves an ingénue—fashion insiders included. Perhaps that’s why at Paris Fashion Week in September, newer handbags from Bottega Veneta and Loewe jostled for space and street-style flashbulbs.
“These bags, especially ones by independent labels like Khaite, are quieter signals of cultural access,” explained Goor. “Everyone knows what an Hermès Kelly bag is. So now there need to be new signals” beyond traditional status bags to convey power.
Sasha Bikoff Cooper, a Manhattan interior designer, says there’s a less cynical explanation for why these bags have captured celebrity fans—and more important, paying customers. “They’re fresh and also beautiful,” she said. “Hermès is always classic. It’s like a first love. But you want newness, too.”
The Wall Street Journal is not compensated by retailers listed in its articles as outlets for products. Listed retailers frequently are not the sole retail outlets.
