Where
are the jobless? Changing unemployment and non-employment in
cities and regions
Anne
E. Green and David Owen, 1998,
The
Policy Press: Bristol, £11.95
Review
by David Webster
Manufacturing
employment fell enormously between 1981 and 1991, especially in
London and other large urban centres. Male full-time employment
and unskilled jobs were particularly hard-hit. At the same time
managerial/professional jobs, and female part-time employment
grew. These changes have led to severe skills and spatial
mismatches whose consequence has been high unemployment especially
in London, other large cities, and mining areas. For men, Labour
Force Survey (LFS) unemployment was even higher in 1993 than at
its previous peak in 1984. But unemployment is no longer fully
revealed by claimant or LFS figures. "Non-employment"
has increased for men, although generally falling for women, and
in terms of non-employment the North-South divide has remained
stubbornly evident.
This
is the picture painted by the Green/Owen teams new report.
Unfortunately it does not emerge as clearly as it might. Despite
its title, the report does not actually reveal where the jobless
are except in terms of broad area typologies and extreme cases.
There are confusing parallel analyses in terms of both local
authority areas and "travel to work" areas (TTWAs). The
latter should have been omitted altogether in favour of a fuller
local authority analysis. TTWAs give much detail about a lot of
small rural areas, but none at all about the great urban
concentrations of unemployment, while generating spurious
anomalies. The chosen "cluster" classification of local
authorities is not suited to the purpose in hand and as a result
the important contribution to unemployment in particular areas of
job losses in mining and fishing is missed.
For
the non-beginner, this report has much of interest to offer. But
anyone wanting a straightforward authoritative guide to
unemployment and non-employment and their geographical
distribution would be best to start with Beatty et al.s The
Real Level of Unemployment (Sheffield Hallam University,
1997), which unlike Green and Owen gives estimates for every local
authority which are invaluable for research purposes. Sadly, a
good comprehensive account of the relationship between job loss
and unemployment in modern Britain has not yet been written.
David
Webster
C/o
Radical Statistics
10
Ruskin House
Heaton
Bradford
BD9 6ER
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