Women’s Unemployment in the 1930s: Some Comparison with the 1980s

Abstract

In the inter-war period in Britain, registered unemployment never dropped below 10 per cent of the insured labour force. At its peak in January 1933, official estimates were of nearly 3 million people unemployed – about 22 per cent of insured workers. If the unregistered and uninsured had been included, the totals would have been much higher. Today, when government estimates for the numbers of unemployed have topped 3 million, parallels between the 1930s and the 1980s are frequently evoked. Mass unemployment and the absence of any imminent sense of economic recovery are strongly reminiscent of the early 1930s.