The changing geography of unemployment and non-employment in Britain

This chapter provides an evaluative overview of selected key features of continuity and change in the geography of non-employment in Britain in the 1980s, using a range of indicators from various data sources at different spatial scales. The concepts of unemployment, inactivity and nonemployment are reviewed in the first section of the chapter, and the different statistical sources and geographical units referred to subsequently are outlined. In the second section the main emphasis is on outlining selected features of changing geographical patterns of non-employment, rather than attempting to 'explain' them in a comprehensive fashion. Amongst the changes reviewed are the convergence of regional unemployment rates in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and geographical variations in timing of entry into recession in 1979 and 1989/90. Substantial intra-regional variations in unemployment are highlighted, and the tendency for an increasing proportion of variation in local unemployment rates to be accounted for by intra-regional, rather than inter-regional, differences is reviewed. The disproportionate relative increase in unemployment in the country's large urban areas is identified as a major feature of change in the 1980s, with non-employment becoming increasingly extensive in many urban labour markets. A discussion of the concept of segregation follows in the third section of the chapter. A range of measures of different aspects of segregation are operationalised using data from the Census of Population, and the main features of geographical patterns of segregation of non-employed sub-groups are outlined. In particular, the increasing segregation of the non-employed in the largest cities is highlighted. The final section is concerned with synthesising the empirical evidence presented and highlighting the implications for policy