Local Unemployment Change in Britain

Between the late 1970s and early 1990s there were massive changes and restructuring in the economic, social and political arenas, in Britain, the rest of Europe and North America. In Britain, the recession of the early 1980s and subsequent recovery were manifestly spatially uneven in both their magnitude and timing. As the century moved into recession once again at the end of the 1980s the timing and magnitude of rises in unemployment were, again spatially uneven, but with areas previously relatively immune from job losses appearing to suffer particularly badly - particularly in the initial stages. This book addresses the currently unexplored issue of local response to national economic cycles, and in particular, leads and lags in unemployment rates at the local scale. At a time when institutional developments have led to an increasing tendency for local areas to be viewed in isolation from the broader regional and national contexts in which they are embedded, it aims to provide information for policy makers, students and teachers and should also be of interest to the general public.