Work and Unemployment 1834-1911

This volume explores the idea of unemployment, as nineteenth-century economists constructed the category ‘unemployment’, referring to a structural problem that caused ‘genuine workmen’ to be temporarily unemployed through no fault of their own. Sources examine how social thinkers and politicians put forward a range of arguments about the reasons for unemployment, the increasingly detailed categorization of people without work, and the growing movement to represent ‘labour’ both inside and outsid