ABSTRACT

This chapter outlines the extent and nature of employment disadvantage; to explore the possibility that there are different kinds of disadvantage; and to seek out the factors that separate the disadvantaged from the not-so-disadvantaged. It explores the political consequences of widespread economic disadvantage that would be limited by sectionalism amongst the disadvantaged. It seems that large numbers of men in the kind of northern, working-class, council estate areas the authors studied experience disadvantage in the labour market at some point in their working lives; and that those who do not are not very different from those who do. The high unemployment rates which are apparent in the areas the authors studied are only the starting point to considering the labour market disadvantages of workers there. The chapter examines a higher level of exposure to disadvantage, possibly because they are affected more by recent changes in the labour market.