ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with what may be happening in the inner city labour market, and in particular with explanations of the level and pattern of unemployment. The emphasis is on problems arising in Britain, and most of the empirical material discussed relates to London, although some comparisons are made with Liverpool and with other cities generally. This work grows out of the author's involvement with the Lambeth Inner Area Study (IAS), a multi-disciplinary, area-based research and action project commissioned by the Department of the Environment in 1972 and completed in 1976. The chapter considers whether the inner city labour market has any distinctive structural characteristics and whether these can be related to various alternative models of labour market behaviour. It explains unemployment and related problems — underemployment, employment instability, low income – in the inner areas.
