ABSTRACT

In the last two chapters the focus has been on different forms of work, looking first at employment in the formal economy and then at other types of work, both paid and unpaid, in the hidden, domestic, and community economies. In this chapter I want to focus on those who are without formal employment of any kind; that is the unemployed. Now not everyone who is without formal employment is regarded or regards themselves as unemployed. It is an extremely difficult term to define and this is because many people and institutions have an interest in defining unemployment, including the state. Thus, official statistics on unemployment depend just as much on a particular definition as do sociological ones. (If you are interested in following up this point, see Slattery (1986) on official statistics.) For example in 1987 as I write this, the long-term unemployed are being encouraged to enter various schemes involving temporary work or training. If they do so, even though they are not thereby obtaining a permanent job nor necessarily getting any more money than they

would on benefit, then they are no longer included in the statistics about the number of unemployed people. So we cannot rely on official figures either for a picture of who the unemployed are nor for a working definition, although clearly we have to use such statistics if we are to be able to say anything in general terms about the unemployed.