UNEMPLOYMENT IN BRITAIN SINCE 1945

1
2nd Draft 24th March 1999
UNEMPLOYMENT IN BRITAIN SINCE 1945.
by
Ian Gazeley and Andrew Newell,
School of Social Sciences, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton, BN1 9QN.
1. Introduction.
At the end of the Second World War the best prediction for unemployment was
probably a rise from the very low wartime levels to numbers closer to the interwar
experience, perhaps 10 percent of the workforce (about 2 million workers). Instead,
unemployment remained abnormally low for over two decades; it did not pass 2 percent
until 1963 and eventually reached 5 percent of the workforce in 1976. Thereafter
unemployment at last returned to levels commensurate with the 1920s and 1930s. The post
war peak was 13 percent, reached in 1986. With hindsight it is possible to see a long run
trend increase in unemployment starting, perhaps, in the early 1960s and ending in the mid
1980s. After two large recessions, in the early 1980s and the early 1990s, unemployment
seemed to subside towards t...