Labour-market reforms would increase demand for less-skilled workers, particularly in service industries such as health care.

ECONOMIST: Unbalanced skill levels could make the world more unequal

Traditionally, productivity growth has slowed as expansions have matured, with firms obliged to draw less-skilled workers from the depleted pool of labour.

ECONOMIST: In due course it will stop. Until then, one stands in awe

In rich countries, competition from millions of new, low-skilled workers has acted as a drag on wages for less-skilled ones in advanced economies.

ECONOMIST: Unbalanced skill levels could make the world more unequal

But trade-union rules make it difficult to hire and fire workers, lower-paid jobs for the less skilled are hard to come by, and a combination of high taxes on low incomes and generous welfare payments reduces the incentive to seek work at all.

ECONOMIST: Is a large flow of migrants a good or a bad thing?

And a Home Office analysis of a sample of migrants eligible for settlement in 2011 shows that under current rules those in less-skilled and worse-paid jobs (nurses, care workers, cooks) were more likely to settle at the first opportunity than those in better-paid or graduate-level jobs.

ECONOMIST: Farewell, big society; hello, guest workers on sufferance

First, the premium for skilled workers has been falling: a surge in secondary education has increased the supply of literate, reasonably well-schooled workers, and years of steady growth have raised relative demand for the less skilled in the formal workforce, whether as construction workers or cleaners.

ECONOMIST: An unequal continent is becoming less so