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Social Change and the Experience of Unemployment (Social Change and Economic Life Initiative)

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The book analyses data from three surveys, documenting the experiences of a representative sample of employed and unemployed people in six towns in Britain in 1986 and 1987. The towns were Aberdeen and Kirkcaldy in Scotland, Northampton and Coventry in the Midlands, Rochdale in the North-west and Swindon in the South-west.

THE EFFECTS OF UNEMPLOYMENT

The book shows how unemployment damages people's health and welfare. The authors see unemployment as the extreme case of the almost universal phenomenon of job insecurity. "Those in insecure labour market positions suffered from a series of major disadvantages in terms of personal welfare. The unemployed, the insecure low-paid, and the insecure non-employed stood out from other groups in the degree of financial difficulty they confronted and in the extent to which they had been forced to cut living standards in recent years. Labour market insecurity was also linked to the type and quality of people's housing ... Those in more disadvantaged labour market positions had poorer psychological and physical health and were obliged to make more frequent use of local health services." "There is a direct causal link between job insecurity and poor psychological health." Unemployed people who moved into secure jobs got better; those who moved into insecure jobs got only a little better. Job loss also had a destructive effect on marriages and on social life. But, contrary to myth, the experience of unemployment led to a stronger attachment to collectivist principles.

The industrial genocide of the 1970s and 1980s hit young people most heavily, particularly those who would previously have gone into manufacturing jobs. Class origin determines occupation, due to the lack of education and of apprenticeships; and the nature of the occupation determines the chances of unemployment. Both links are getting stronger, because there is far less social mobility and far more inequality. So although all jobs are more insecure, manufacturing jobs are even more so.

THE CAUSES OF UNEMPLOYMENT

In the debate about the causes of the vast growth in unemployment, employers and their governments blame the 'supply-side', ie the working class. They say that wages and benefits are too high, that trade unions distort supply, that the unemployed are work-shy, that there is a 'culture of poverty' which distinguishes an 'under-class'.

The work attitudes of the unemployed were not different from those of the employed, and did not affect their vulnerability to unemployment. Nor were their work histories different: "The unemployed had not experienced significantly more jobs or shorter average tenure in their longest jobs." "Those that were currently unemployed were clearly not, on the evidence of their past work histories, inherently unstable members of the work-force." "There was no evidence that differences in either employment motivation or in the flexibility of attitudes to job search affected the time that it took people to find work again." Most significantly, work attitudes did not predict who did and who did not get jobs.

Welfare does not reduce employability, skill or will to work. Claimants and non-claimants seeking work had the same work attitudes. The level of benefits had no effect on the duration of unemployment. There is though a 'benefits effect' for women married to men who had been out of work for a year. Benefit rules take away any income earned by the wives of unemployed men on means-tested benefit, on a pound for pound basis, beyond a low threshold (£4 pre-1988). So lower-paid wives can face effective marginal 'taxation' rates of over 90% when they work.

In all, the book is an excellent piece of research, which refutes all the lies about unemployment. It shows that full employment is necessary for any society that wants to be able to call itself civilised.