ABSTRACT
Unemployment has risen dramatically over the last decade.1 Between 1973 and 1982, while total unemployment in Great Britain increased by 309 per cent, registered unemployment among black people rose by 515 per cent. The proportion of the unemployed in 1973 who were black was 2.7 per cent. In 1982, the figure was 4.1 per cent (Runnymede Trust 1983). A survey carried out by the Policy Studies Institute found unemployment rates of 13 per cent for whites, 25 per cent for people of Afro-Caribbean origin and 20 per cent for those of Asian origin. Asian women were found to have an unemployment rate twice as high as white women, and Afro-Caribbean women a rate one-and-a-half times that of white women (Brown 1984).
