ABSTRACT
High and persistent unemployment, one can claim without exaggeration, has been the central economic policy issue throughout western Europe during the past two decades. After averaging 2.4 per cent annually between 1960 and 1973, unemployment in European Union nations more than tripled, to an annual average of 8.5 per cent, between 1974 and 1995. Since 1990 unemployment has continued to rise, to over 11 per cent, despite an economic upturn since 1994. Rising joblessness, predictably, has carried political implications. For governments of all partisan tendencies, the twin concerns of combating unemployment and coping with its consequences have influenced all aspects of public economic management, including fiscal, monetary, labour, social welfare, regional, and industrial policies. Governments everywhere have sought, assiduously and at times desperately, to generate new jobs while providing sufficient social protection to the unemployed to prevent electoral defection or mass protest.
