Unemployment and Unemployment Relief

This chapter examines the extent of cyclical, seasonal, and casual unemployment from 1870 to 1914, and shows that reported unemployment rates greatly understate the probability of job loss faced by manual workers. It also reveals the public and private battles over relief for the unemployed. In the 1870s, cities abruptly curtailed granting outdoor relief to able-bodied males, and beginning in 1886 the Local Government Board encouraged municipalities to establish work relief projects during downturns. However, neither municipal relief projects nor the work relief established as a result of the 1905 Unemployed Workmen Act succeeded in assisting the temporarily unemployed—most of those employed on relief works were chronically underemployed laborers.