The Controversy about UK Unemployment Statistics  

Oleh:

Wells, John

Jenis: Article from Journal - ilmiah internasional
Dalam koleksi: Ethical Perspectives: Journal of the European Ethics Network vol. 3 no. 1 (Apr. 1996), page 7-14.
Topik: The Latest Developments

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Perpustakaan Pusat (Semanggi) Nomor Panggil: EE45.2 Non-tandon: 1 (dapat dipinjam: 0) Tandon: tidak ada

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There is widespread public disquiet in the UK about the country’s headline unemployment count: the claimant count (cc) of those unemployed and receiving unemployment-related benefit.1 Public confidence has been undermined by the frequent changes arising from changes/restrictions in eligibility for benefit, as well as from technical statistical changes; they total 35 to date and have virtually all served to reduce the count. The British Labour Party’s deputy leader, John Prescott, has insisted that unemployment, properly-measured, was at least one million higher than the cc — standing at that time at just below 3 million — thereby endorsing and publicizing the long-argued position taken by the Unemployment Unit2 as well as by other researchers.3 Concerned by the political controversy and lack of public confidence in the headline unemployment count, as well as the adverse implications for the professional integrity of its members working in the Government Statistical Service, the Council of the Royal Statistical Society (Rss, established a Working Party on the Measurement of Unemployment in the UK, whose membership included the present and immediate past presidents of the RSS. Their Report was published on 5 April 1995. The report begins with a number of critical reflections about the problem of defining unemployment.4 One approach is to focus simply on the number of individuals without work but who want to work and are, nevertheless, actively participating in the labour market. Thus, Keynes, for example, defined involuntary unemployment as those individuals who ‘though prepared to work at the going wage are unable to find work at that wage’ — which carries with it the implication that they must be both available to start work and actually be looking for it. His proviso concerning the ‘going rate for the job’ presumably is there to rule out those with unrealistic wage expectations from the involuntary unemployed category. To operationalise Keynes’s definition for measurement purposes, international labour statisticians have required active participation in the labour market, as exhibited by some sort of ‘search ‘ and ‘availability’ test as a sine qua non for being classified as unemployed, making it central to the International Labor Organisation’s (ILo) definition of unemployment. The ILO guidelines on ‘search’ and ‘availability’ are currently interpreted in most countries as: “those without work, of even one hour, during the reference period, who are available to start work within two weeks and who have actively sought work during the previous four weeks.”

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