Unemployment and the UK economic cycle
The ONS has produced a short piece looking at what has happened to unemployment in the UK over the last three economic recessions.
Their data shows that the unemployment rate has (thus far) remained lower than it was in the first six quarters of the 1980s and 1990s recessions. The unemployment rate was 0.1 percentage points higher at the start of the 1980s recession than at the start of this recession. Several explanations have been put forward for this including a shift towards part-time working, greater use of short-time working to avoid compulsory redundancies, a fall in working hours and businesses encouraging some of their employees the chance to take unpaid breaks from work such as sabbaticals during the downturn. Wage freezes and (in some cases) pay cuts may have had some effect on total employment.
