Summary

In Chapter 1, I listed seven different ways of viewing unemployment, each with strong political implications, and suggested the sort of methodology that enabled contrary views to co-exist. There followed a definition of unemployment, a note on various ways of measuring it, and a table showing the resulting statistics for unemployment (as defined) in various industrialised countries. We noted how rates varied between the principal OECD countries, highest in 1984 in the United Kingdom, lowest in Canada, Sweden and Japan. By September or October 1985 it had fallen a bit in Sweden and the United States, but in general there had been little change. Nowhere had it reached the proportions of 1932 and 1933, but it has proved to be much more persistent and refused to go away. In the 1930s, prosperity was restored by preparations for war; in present-day United States by a budget deficit likely to be $210 billion for 1984–5, between 5 and 6 per cent of GDP. In the United Kingdom the deficit for 1984–5 will be between 2½ and 3 per cent of GDP. Both governments are monetarists, but Mr Reagan is a pragmatic monetarist and Mrs Thatcher a dogmatic monetarist. We noted six facets of unemployment or ways of classifying the unemployed: by occupation, industry, region, age, sex, and duration.