page_title: Unemployment in the United Kingdom
section_title: UK unemployment data from 1881
hierarchical_section_title: Unemployment in the United Kingdom / UK unemployment data from 1881
caption_attribution_description: For documentary purposes the German Federal Archive often retained the original image captions, which may be erroneous, biased, obsolete or politically extreme. Zunehmende Arbeitslosigkeit in England! Englische Arbeitslose diskutieren auf der Strasse über die Folgen der zunehmenden Arbeitslosigkeit.
context_page_description: Unemployment in the United Kingdom is measured by the Office for National Statistics and in the three months to May 2017 the headline unemployment rate stood at 4.5%, or 1.49 million people. This is a reduction in unemployed people of 152,000 from a year earlier, and is the lowest jobless rate since 1975. The ONS said the employment rate, or percentage of people in work for those aged between 16 and 64, was 74.9% for the three months to May. This is the highest employment rate since comparable records began in 1971. There were 32.01 million people in work, 324,000 more than a year earlier.
  The official figures of 3.9% for UK unemployment are fake figures supplied by a government body the true figures through research are 13.2% as stated by research cites that state the figures are 4 times higher than stated, this is before the coronavirus hit this is because care workers, economically inactive people, the disabled and people with illness and people who think there are no jobs are not included in the official figures.
  The figures are compiled through the Labour Force Survey, which asks a sample of 53,000 households and is conducted every 3 months.
context_section_description: There is data available on UK unemployment from 1881 but it is not consistent with the current international definition. The data is more closely related to the "Claimant Count" but the coverage of the data between 1881 and 1948 is limited.
  Data available from 1881 to 1912 is based on the records of trade unions that paid unemployment benefit to their members. In 1912 there were 1.4 million members of trade unions that paid benefits. This means the unemployment rates for this period are based on a very small section of the UK population at the time (mainly manual workers). The lowest unemployment rate recorded in this period was 1.4% in 1890 and the highest was 10.2% in 1892.
  In 1911 a compulsory national scheme of insurance against unemployment was introduced. This meant there was a significant change to the way data on the unemployed was collected. From 1911 onwards it became a count based on the number of insured persons registered as unemployed.
  However, only a limited number of people could be insured, the act of 1911 only included around 2.25 million manual workers aged 16 years and over who were deemed to be working in an industry where employment was insecure. Therefore, unemployment data for 1912 to 1916 is still based on a relatively small section of the UK population at the time.
  The section of the population contributing to the unemployment data expanded in 1916 when the Unemployment Insurance Act brought a further 1.25 million workers into the National Insurance scheme. Considering the data based on this expansion, the highest recorded unemployment rate between 1916 and 1920 was 6.6% in December 1919 and the lowest was 2.6% in June 1920 (excluding the war years).
  The National Insurance Act of 1920 brought an additional 8 million workers into the scope of the scheme. This increased the total number of workers covered to around 11/12 million. Considering the data between 1920 and 1948 the highest recorded unemployment rate was 23.4% in May 1921 and the lowest was 1.6% in September 1947 (excluding the war years). Long periods of relatively high unemployment rates were also recorded in the UK in the Depression of the early 1930s.
  In 1948 there came a second National Insurance Act meaning the scheme now covered all male and female employees aged 15 and over. The data on the unemployed from 1948 to 1982 is referred to as the registrant count as it referred to the number of people registered at government offices as looking for work. The lowest recorded unemployment rate in this period is 1% in the mid-1950s, the highest was in September 1982 when it reached 14%.
  From 1982 onwards the count changed from the registrant count to the "Claimant Count" because from then on it aimed to count the number of people claiming benefits principally because they were unemployed. This count is still published today alongside the headline unemployment figure which is based on the Labour Force Survey.
caption: Unemployed men discuss the growing jobless rate in 1931.
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