This theme is concerned with who was able to find work, and the
consequences for those who could not. The census is not the
ideal source to study these questions, because it is taken only
every ten years, and we plan to add additional information from
other sources such as the records of National Insurance and the
Poor Law system, and their modern equivalents, Job Seekers
Allowance and Income Support. For now, our only non-census data
here comes from the trade union-run welfare system that laid the
foundations for the National Insurance system before the 1914-18
war. One strength of census data on unemployment is that it is
relatively little affected by the changing rules of benefit
systems, although we do add numbers on government training
schemes to our figures for 1991. For most of the twentieth
century, the unemployment rate among women was of limited value.
Many women were not involved in paid work, and even those with
jobs had problems claiming benefits when they lost them. We
therefore concentrate inst