Some Aspects of Unemployment and the Labour Market, 1966-71

Abstract

The level of unemployment has recently risen to a level not previously experienced during the post-war period. Most of the increase has happened in two fairly sharp movements, the first in 1966-7 and the second in 1970-1. A measure of the scale of the problem is given by the following comparison: in early 1966 the number of wholly unemployed males in Great Britain stood at a little over 200,000; and by the end of 1971 the figure had risen to over 700,000. (See chart 1, where unemployment is on an inverted scale.)

The Demand for Apprentice Recruits by the Engineering Industry, 1951‐71

“…The results are not surprising bearing in mind that the introduction of the off-the-job training scheme for first year craft trainees and the early experience of the so-called 'shake-out' (see Bowers et al, 1972) also cover the 1966-67 period. The unravelling of their effects upon apprentice recruitment is unlikely to be achieved given the lack of satisfactory data on labour costs.…”

Some Recent Developments in Labour Economics

“…An early exposition of the unemployment problem was presented in the paper by Bowers et al (1972), which set out how unemployment was related to vacancies in the standard Unemployment-Vacancy (U-V) relationship and provided early applied econometric evidence. An example of an article in the NIER which contributed hugely to the understanding of unemployment is that by Layard and Nickell (1985) which actually contained the main ideas in their seminal book with Jackman (Layard et al 1991).…”

British Activity Rates: A Survey of Research

“…The relationship should vary with the level and conditions of national insurance payments and with the level of voluntary quits. Bowers et al (1970Bowers et al ( , 1972 argue that the IeveI of voluntary quits varies directly with the level of activity in the economy15 so that the relationship between recorded and unrecorded unemployment must additionally be a function of the level of demand. These same variables can of course be expected to influence the level of unemployment as well as its measurement.…”

“…The only specific examination of this point was by Bowers et al (1972). Following the doubts about the accuracy of the recorded employment data discussed in section 11, they used the labour turnover statistics to attain a measure of employment change and related this to the change in recorded unemployment.…”