Great Britain Historical Geographical Information System (GBHGIS)

4. long-run average unemployment by county, 1881-1910

Our earliest work on pre-1914 economic distress used branch-level unemployment statistics from trade unions. These data are easily aggregated up to any set of administrative units, although the concentration of union branches into towns in industrial regions means that coverage is inevitably patchy. In order to be as comprehensive as possible, this map combines data for the two largest unions, aggregates to county level and computes an overall average for a thirty-year period.

The rates were computed from a total of 59,756 branch reports, but even so some of the most rural counties provide insufficient data. This is easily the most comprehensive map of pre-1914 unemployment ever drawn, and the pattern shown is unmistakable: high unemployment in the same regions that were hardest hit in the inter-war period.