UNEMPLOYMENT STATISTICS. The following arti cle deals merely with unemployment figures and their interpreta tion, and as far as possible refrains from drawing deductions from them.
Prior to the year 1912 almost the only statistics of unemploy ment in the United Kingdom were those relating to unemployment among the members of certain trade unions paying unemployment benefits. These statistics go back over a considerable period. From 1888 onward returns were regularly obtained by the Board of Trade from a number of such trade unions, and for a number of unions figures were computed for earlier years and carried back to 1851. The statistics for the earlier years, however, rest on a very slender basis. Until 1872 the total membership covered does not reach 1 oo,000. In 1893, when the figures were first regularly published in the Labour Gazette 23 unions, with a total membership of nearly 300,000, contributed returns. The membership rose to 1,603,000 in 192o, but had fallen again to 833,00o in 1926, when the series was discontinued in view of the immensely greater range and value of the statistics derived from the working of the Unemployment Insurance Acts. The annual percentages of unemployed among members of these trade unions from 1881 to 1926 are shown in Table I. on page 693.
The percentage of these trade union members unemployed at the end of each month from 1888 to 1928 is shown in Table V. on page 694.
These percentages of unemployment were never regarded as providing a trustworthy measure of the actual intensity of un employment among workpeople generally. They cover a relatively small portion of the industrial population ; they wholly exclude some of the industries, e.g., agriculture and railway service, in which unemployment is comparatively stable, and they include in undue proportion such fluctuating industries as engineering and shipbuilding. On the other hand, the trade unions included are of rather special character in that they are all unions paying unemployment benefit and they are mainly (though not entirely) composed of the more skilled classes of workers. Taken by and large these factors tend to cancel out and close examination of the figures during the years of overlap when the old trade union and the new insurance statistics were running together leads to the view that by happy accident the trade union percentages re flected not too badly the general rate of unemployment. Be that
as it may, the trade union percentages may safely be regarded as providing a valuable index to the changes in the state of employment from year to year and, more uncertainly, from month to month. In this latter aspect they may be taken as giving a measure of the seasonal swing of unemployment before the war. Since the war the sudden intrusion of high figures due to the reflex influence of large trade disputes, particularly in the coal industry, often masks the seasonal trend and even before the war this erratic element may, unless allowed for, lead to mis leading conclusions. Read with that qualification, Table II., showing the averages of the percentages returned for each month over the 20-year period 1894-1913 is informative.
year 1912 a new source of information concerning the amount and rate of unemployment opened out. Part II. of the National Insurance Act passed in Dec. 1911, provided for the institution of a system of compulsory unemployment insurance for workpeople employed in certain industries regarded as being more than commonly subject to unemployment, viz., building, public works, contracting, shipbuilding, engineering, construction of vehicles, ironfounding, and certain branches of saw-milling. From the working of this measure came the first instalment of a new series of unemployment statistics. The workpeople so insured numbered some 2,300,000, and from Sept. 1912 onwards, informa tion concerning the rate and volume of total unemployment among these persons became publicly available. In July 1916 the scope of Unemployment Insurance was extended to include workpeople employed upon munitions work or in certain specified industries, and the numbers covered increased to approximately 3,700,000. By the acts of 1920 and 1921, the range of National Unemploy ment Insurance received its latest and greatest extension and with certain exceptions now covers all manual workers (and also non manual workers earning at the rate of not more than £250 a year) of the age of 16 and upwards in all trades and industries except agriculture and domestic service, in 1928 about 11,784,000.