ABSTRACT

The mass unemployment of the 1930s has become a yardstick against which an ‘unemployment problem’ is often measured. In fact, the issue is not so simple and, from the perspective of Britain in the 1980s, there are very good grounds for revising the view of the period as one of uniquely high unemployment. Unemployment was a tragedy in interwar Britain because it was prolonged and struck with devastating effects at the heart of the British industrial economy, in regions which had been relatively prosperous, where societies with a pronounced work ethic were geared to regular employment and weekly wage income for adult men. The usual measures certainly suggest that the level of unemployment was exceptionally high during the period. The major differences with pre-1914 lie in the disaggregated pattern, with a reversal in the relative regional impact, and in the persistence of heavy unemployment over the entire trade cycle.