Abstract
No free society has been able to contain inflation without having some unemployment. For wage inflation gets bid up unless employers face a reasonable supply of attractive applicants for their vacancies. But long-term unemployment does not provide such a supply of applicants. The longer people have been unemployed the less attractive they are to employers, as is illustrated dramatically in Figure 15.1. So long-term unemployment fails to control inflation, and at the same time is deeply damaging to the unemployed. It is therefore a total waste, economic and social. Although we now have the same level of vacancies as in 1972, we have eight times more long-term unemployed.
Employment Policy Institute, Economic Report, 11 (4) (March 1997), pp. 1–17
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© 1999 Richard Layard
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Layard, R. (1999). Preventing Long-term Unemployment: Strategy and Costings (1997). In: Tackling Unemployment. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230379206_15
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230379206_15
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
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