Is Unemployment Inevitable?

Abstract

The remarkable acceptance by the British public of the levels of mass unemployment of the 1980s suggests a sort of inevitability. The failure of unemployment to become a political millstone around the government’s neck must be due either to skilful marketing of government policy or a view that there was little that could be done about unemployment. To accept the demoralisation and waste of resources that stems from unemployment is defeatist in the extreme. We have had full employment in the past so why should we not now? Is there any economic justification for this inevitability? If’s a recession when your neighbour loses his job; it’s a depression when you lose yours. (Harry S. Truman)