The geographical distribution of unemployment in the United kingdom shows wide differences in the intensity in various areas. Table VI. below shows these variations at July 23, 1928.
The local incidence of unemployment can be followed month by month in the local unemployment index prepared by the Ministry of Labour and issued as a subscription publication by the Stationery Office. Here can be found the numbers of in sured persons, and the percentage rate of unemployment for men, women and juveniles for 637 towns and for country areas in Great Britain. The issue for Aug. 13, 1928, shows towns in the Welsh coal areas and in the mining counties of Durham and Northumberland with rates of unemployment of 70, 6o and so%, while at the other extreme are whole counties, such as Surrey, Sussex and Hertfordshire, with less than 3% of unemployment and individual towns in these counties with less than 2%. These detailed tabulations show the concentration of the most intense unemployment in certain industries and in certain districts where those industries are found, and the virtual absence of unemploy ment over large areas.
Statistical information as to the personal circumstances and industrial history of unemployed persons in Great Britain has been greatly extended since 1923 as a result of the adoption, in that year, of a small-sample method of investigation. The method consists of examining thoroughly, by reference to documents and by personal interview, the case of every hundredth person on the claims files of the employment exchanges, and preparing from the material so obtained a statistical picture of the whole body of unemployed persons. Reports based on these enquiries analyse the results according to sex, age, degree of employability, early training, marital state, industry, date of entering insurance, con tributions paid, benefit received, etc. The impression most rea sonably to be drawn from them is that the unemployed are not a particular class with personal characteristics which conduce to unemployment but are hardly distinguishable from any other assortment of working people. There is a preponderance, cer tainly, of older people. As a man or woman gets past 45 his or her liability to unemployment grows year by year. Between the ages of 3o and 40 less than o% of the men are unemployed, but after 45 the rate of unemployment increases steadily until as men approach 7o something like 20% are unemployed and much the same, on a lower scale, takes place with women. These older
people figure largely in the class described in the reports as "verging on the unemployable." Of the whole number inter viewed in the 1927 enquiry only 2% were assigned by the inter viewing officers to this class, and nearly three-quarters of the 2% were people over 6o, many of them suffering from some physical impairment. The reports afford little ground for supposing that either family responsibilities or war service rank prominently as influences determining who will or will not be employed. It is also made quite clear in the reports that the unemployed are not a "standing army" consisting of the same people week after week and month after month. At any given date there will be found some who have been on the fund for considerable periods, per haps o% will have been on benefit throughout the previous year, but these will on further investigation be found to live in one or other of those industrially afflicted areas to which reference has been made, and to have been dependent upon one or other of the depressed industries. As for the rest there is a constant movement of individuals into and out of the "unemployed" group. On any Monday, 17% of the persons registered at exchanges were not there on the previous Monday ; they were new-comers who had lost, or had been stood-off from, their jobs a day or two before and were either seeking other jobs or waiting for the former ones to re-open. The analyses reveal among the whole number a continuous gradation from persons who have never visited an exchange before, who will not remain on the register more than a few days, and who may never appear again, down to those who have drawn benefit every week in the previous year and have had little regular employment for several years ; but this "hard core" of the unemployment problem is found to be associated with industry and locality and not with individual in competence, laziness or depravity. For the rest, the unemployed are demonstrated to be not a "standing army" but a melting crowd whose composition changed materially from week to week; a constantly changing body of workpeople who had lately lost one job and would presently get another.