Unemployment

Edward Higgs

The recording of data on unemployment in the British censuses was patchy and incomplete in the years before the Second World War. The early censuses from 1801 to 1831 asked local officials for the numbers of persons or families 'chiefly employed' in broad economic sectors, but did not mention unemployment (Higgs, 1989, 5–7). From 1841 onwards census taking was the responsibility of the General Register Office (GRO), and the local civil registrars of births, marriages and deaths who were administered by it. The registrars appointed temporary enumerators, who collected information about the inmates of households by giving householders a household schedule. These were to be filled out by the householder using instructions provided. The Victorian GRO appears to have wanted to know the former occupations of people, even if they were unemployed, in order to calculate occupational life-tables for actuarial purposes.

In 1841 unemployment was not mentioned in the instructions given to householders or enumerators. In 1851, however, householders were instructed that:

ALMSPEOPLE, and persons in the receipt of parish relief should, after being described as such have their previous occupations inserted.

The instruction in 1861 was similar, whilst in 1871 and 1881 the householder's instructions dropped any mention of almspeople. Unemployment made its first specific appearance in these years since the schedules carried the instruction that, 'Persons ordinarily engaged in some industry, but OUT OF EMPLOYMENT on April 2nd, should be so described, as "Coal miner, unemployed", "Printer, unemployed".' Thereafter, with the introduction of columns for employment status, the question regarding unemployment seems to have been dropped (Higgs, 1989, 92). In 1911 the household schedule specifically instructed householders that if the member of the household was out of work 'the usual occupation must be stated' (Census of England and Wales, 1911, General report with appendices, 257).

The returns respecting unemployment in the manuscript census returns available to public inspection (those prior to 1911) are plainly imperfect. Information on unemployment seldom seems to have been given consistently. The inmates of workhouses often have specific occupations put against their names, although they might more properly be regarded as retired or unemployed. When abstracting data on employment of those in institutions, the GRO's own solution to such problems, at least in 1891, was to regard all people aged 60 years and over as having retired but to count the rest as having a current occupation (Higgs, 1989, 92–3).

Part of the problem was the difficulty in making a clear distinction between being in employment, being retired, or being unemployed. When work was very casual and stoppages commonplace, especially for the elderly, the distinction might be very difficult to draw. A dock labourer, for example, would not know if he was to get work until he arrived at the dock gates. Much work was seasonal in the Victorian period, with periods of customary idleness in between. What was voluntary retirement for the elderly, and what was an involuntary inability to participate in the work force, might also be difficult to distinguish. The concept of a definite 'age of retirement' probably only became current after the passage of the 1908 Old Age Pensions Act, which gave people 70 and over a pension if they fulfilled certain criteria. But the elderly appear to have been increasingly dropping out of the labour market from the 1880s onwards, perhaps under the impact of technological change (Woollard). Similarly, the introduction of the National Insurance system, under the 1911 National Insurance Act, which paid some unemployment benefits to men in selected trades in return for payments into approved societies, may have given a sharper meaning to the term 'unemployed'. Given these problems, it is understandable that the treatment of unemployment in the published Census Reports of the nineteenth century was very sparse.

However, in 1921 the census was extended to include particular mention of those 'Out of Work' in the employment status column. In this the 1921 census was returning, in part, to the arrangements in the censuses of 1871 and 1881. This renewed interest may have reflected the passage of the 1911 National Insurance Act. In 1931 'Out of Work' was to be appended to the personal occupation, as in the mid-Victorian period, and data on the unemployed was tabulated for the first time (Office of Population Censuses and Surveys and the General Register Office, Edinburgh, Guide to Census Reports, 56–8). Given that this was in the depths of the Great Depression, this increased interest in the subject was understandable. In the census volume on industries published in 1934, an attempt was made to show the numbers unemployed in the various occupations and industrial sectors (Census of England and Wales, 1931, Industry tables), and the Unemployment Insurance Statutory Committee made a comparison of the results of the census enquiry in certain industries (Office of Population Censuses and Surveys and the General Register Office, Edinburgh, Guide to Census Reports, Great Britain 1801–1966, 58).

REFERENCES

Census of England and Wales, 1911, General report with appendices BPP 1917–18 XXXV. [View this document: General report, England and Wales, 1911]

Census of England and Wales, 1931, Industry tables (London: HMSO, 1934). [View this document: Industry tables, England and Wales, 1931]

Edward Higgs, Making sense of the census. The manuscript returns for England and Wales, 1801–1901 (London, 1989).

Office of Population Censuses and Surveys and the General Register Office, Edinburgh, Guide to Census Reports, Great Britain 1801–1966 (London, 1977).

Matthew Woollard, 'The employment and retirement of older men, 1851–1881: further evidence from the census', Continuity and Change, 17 (2002), 437–63.