ABSTRACT
The change in the distribution of employment among insured workers over the same period was even more in favour of the South and Midlands: in the three Southern division’s employment rose by 47 per cent and in the Midlands by 32 per cent, as against a rise of only 4 per cent in the North, Scotland, and Wales. The area of lowest unemployment in England and Wales between 1931 and 1936 was concentrated round London, running as far into the Midlands as Warwickshire and Leicestershire, and with an arm along the South Coast as far as Devon. The effects of the excess unemployment in many areas of the North and West recorded in the Ministry of Labour's general statistics were aggravated by the existence in many of the same areas of unemployment which was either unrecorded or only partially recorded.
