Friday 4 April 2014

Full employment


Here begins a more detailed look at this week's editions of Newsnight...


Monday night's Newsnight began by casting a characteristically jaundiced eye over George Osborne's pledge to fight for full employment. Jeremy Paxman flared his nostrils and raised his eyebrows from the word 'go'. 

Laura Kuenssberg's report not only featured that clip of former Tory chancellor Norman Lamont saying unemployment is a "price...worth paying", but then managed to nab ol' Norm for one of her two 'talking heads', asking him about the contrast between what he - and other former Tory chancellors - have said, and what George Osborne is saying now. 

Her other talking head was Gavin Kelly of the Resolution Foundation (which is precisely how he was labelled.) Gavin Kelly of the Resolution Foundation said that jobs these days tend to be more "insecure"). As so often, viewers weren't informed that Gavin Kelly was one of Gordon Brown's advisors and that the Resolution Foundation is close to Ed Miliband's Labour Party (something we may have mentioned before at "Is"). 

Then the Conservative Economic Secretary to the Treasury Nicky Morgan (who, I'll admit, was new to me) was given a thorough-going over by Jeremy Paxman. (No Paul Flowers treatment for her.) 

As a stats fan, I was intrigued by Laura's summary of the trajectory of UK unemployment since the Second World War:
It was remarkably stable and low between 1950 and the early '70s. Average unemployment was just 2%, almost under a million. But by the 80's the picture was drastically changed, hitting 13% at its peak in 1982. Right now it's 7.2%.
That is certainly the broad outline. What about historically?

Curiously, it's very hard to find a simple year by year online guide to the UK unemployment over time. Even the ONS website doesn't seem to contain a list that carries us over the past one hundred years or so.

The nearest it comes is an old 1995 report that shows the sheer scale of unemployment between the First and Second World Wars (reaching an astonishing 21.3% in 1932 during the Great Depression), the way the Second World War made it plummet to 0.8%, the slight immediate post-war rise, then the long years when under-2% rates were common, the very gradual beginnings of a rise in the late 60s, the sharper rise in the late 70s, the staggering leap between 1980 to 1981, those five years when unemployment was above 3 million, the dramatic fall in the late 80s, then the rise again in the early 90s. 

This list shows the year, the number of people unemployment and the unemployment rate (%) for that year:

1922 1,541,500 14.3
1923 1,292,058 11.7
1924 1,152,875 10.3
1925 1,288,742 11.3
1926 1,441,175 12.5
1927 1,141,525 9.7
1928 1,286.858 10.8
1929 1,275,992 10.4
1930 2,014,017 16
1931 2,718,325 21.3
1932 2,813,058 22.1
1933 2,588,367 19.9
1934 2,221,067 16.7
1935 2,106,125 15.5
1936 1,821,700 13.1
1937 1,557,000 10.8
1938 1,881,367 12.9
1939 1,589,800 9.3
1940 1,035,325 6
1941 391,317 2.2
1942 144,117 0.8
1943 99,075 0.6
1944 89,575 0.6
1945 202,283 1.3
1946 389,758 2.5
1947 495,658 3.1
1948 330,525 1.8
1949 338,000 1.6
1950 341,092 1.6
1951 281,350 1.3
1952 462,525 2.2
1953 380,033 1.8
1954 317,767 1.5
1955 264,525 1.2
1956 287,125 1.3
1957 347,233 1.6
1958 500,883 2.2
1959 512,092 2.3
1960 392,817 1.7
1961 376,817 1.6
1962 499,883 2.1
1963 612,275 2.6
1964 413,367 1.7
1965 359,742 1.5
1966 390,933 1.6
1967 599,125 2.5
1968 601,333 2.5
1969 597,049 2.5
1970 639,858 2.7
1971 796,680 3.5
1972 875,650 3.8
1973 618,758 2.7
1974 618,775 2.6
1975 977,600 4.2
1976 1,359,417 5.7
1977 1,483,592 6.2
1978 1,475,042 6.1
1979 1,390,467 5.7
1980 1,794,717 7.4
1981 2,733,800 11.4
1982 3,119,019 13
1983 3,104,660 12.2
1984 3,159,821 11.5
1985 3,271,232 11.7
1986 3,292,867 11.8
1987 2,953,379 10.5
1988 2,370,383 8.3
1989 1,798,713 6.3
1990 1,664,516 5.8
1991 2,291,942 8
1992 2,778,591 9.8
1993 2,919,224 10.3
1994 2,636,478 9.4

Its subsequent history - the fall from the mid 90s onwards, the massive rise following the bust of 2008, and the subsequent fall from 2010 onwards are told in the following two graphs:

(1979-2013)

(2002-2014)

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