UK The evil of unemployment in the 1980s lay in its persistence as much as its scale. If you lost your job, and were not quickly rehired, there were fair odds that you would not find employment for years – however faithfully you followed Norman Tebbit’s advice to “get on your bike”.
For those on the dole, the result was misery. It was no better for the economy, leading to persistently high unemployment. In theory, large numbers of unemployed act to restrain overall wage growth and inflation because those in work know they risk being replaced by jobless rivals. But in the Thatcher era, the long-term unemployed became so detached from the labour market that this damping effect failed to materialise, helping to sow the seeds of the Lawson boom and bust of the late 1980s.
