Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Unemployment denotes the existence within a society, geographic area or social group of significant numbers of adults seeking paid work, and the prevalence of such a condition. It has been a chronic feature of modern societies, which are based on paid employment. Except for the 30-year period after World War II, these societies have normally not provided enough paid work for the adult population. Unemployment has been the cause of frequent social and political conflict, as well as considerable social and psychological distress. Social and political controversy about the causes and effects of, and remedies for, unemployment was especially intense in the 1920s and 1930s, and also in the 1970s and 1980s, both periods of high unemployment. Over recent decades, attention has shifted to consider the whole future of paid work. Unemployment was not a problem in hunting and gathering societies; nor was it admitted as a problem in Soviet-type regimes where its existence was not recognized officially. In tribal societies, the performance of subsistence activities involved relatively little time, no special status or payment, and was not regarded as a separate sphere of life. Soviet-type states also did not recognize a distinctive area of civil society, an ‘economy’, in which workers are employed separate from the state. Hence, they did not acknowledge the existence of unemployment although ... log in or subscribe to read full text