ABSTRACT
One of the difficulties of understanding French unemployment between the wars is the inadequacy of the statistics. There were three measures of unemployment: the census, the benefit claimant count, and the labour exchange returns. The unemployment funds became the basic policy framework for the provision of the unemployed. Whether one considers the relief system, or contemporary assumptions, or cultural representations, unemployment was considered primarily as a male problem. During the interwar period, relative hardship was an ever-present companion of unemployment. In a survey of budgets in 1936, a typical household where the head was unemployed received an income of 11,125 francs. Public works were another strand of the government's 'struggle against unemployment'. A succession of plans bearing the names of incumbent ministers came into operation. To summarize, unemployment in France during this period exhibited certain particularities. The official rates of unemployment were low by international comparison.
