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- Title
Long-term unemployment, the invention of 'hysteresis' and the misdiagnosis of structural unemployment in the UK.
- Authors
Webster, David
- Abstract
This paper investigates the empirical basis for the belief that unemployment makes people less 'employable', and that the existence of a pool of long-term unemployed people is therefore in itself a barrier to full employment. Drawing on data for Great Britain from the 1940s to the present day, it shows that this idea has arisen through misinterpretations of the statistical evidence. The resulting policies, besides diverting resources from the demand-side programmes appropriate to the true situation of structural unemployment, appear to have created a problem of the kind they were intended to address, by encouraging unemployed people to move onto sickness benefits.
- Subjects
UNITED Kingdom; UNEMPLOYMENT; EMPLOYMENT; RIGHT to work (Human rights); TECHNOLOGICAL unemployment; STRUCTURAL unemployment
- Publication
Cambridge Journal of Economics, 2005, Vol 29, Issue 6, p975
- ISSN
0309-166X
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1093/cje/bei082