The Market Managed

Abstract

The two and a half decades that succeeded the end of the Second World War can be described as the golden age of demand management. It was widely believed that the main outcome of the Keynesian revolution was the final banishing of the problem of unemployment. The 1950s and most of the 1960s saw the lowest unemployment rates recorded in the history of the UK. Unemployment was usually less than 2 per cent of the labour force. The growth of real income averaged nearly 3 per cent per year and inflation was at a moderate 3.7 per cent. If the period of the Korean conflict is taken out as a special case that affected world commodity prices, the average rate of inflation from 1949 to 1964 would have been a mere 2.5 per cent. Table 3.1 details the three main indicators from 1950 to 1973.