Great Britain Historical Geographical Information System (GBHGIS)

7. unemployment in october 1932

The Local Unemployment Index (LUI) reported the percentage unemployed in a large number of individual towns, and to map this source a separate Arc/Info coverage was constructed. This contains all locations that ever appeared in the Index, or related sources, together with a coastline supplied by Daniel Dorling. This map forms one of a sequence which are, surprisingly, the first detailed maps ever drawn of inter-war unemployment.

The rates plotted here are not simply copied from the original reports: up to 1936, the count of the unemployed included agricultural workers and elderly and juvenile workers who were not included in the count of the insured used as a divisor, hence we have had to adjust pre-1937 rates using a correction factor obtained by comparing the published rate for each month in 1936 for each town with the rate for 'twelve months earlier' published for the equivalent month and town in 1937. This meant computing 818 correction factors and 28,873 corrected rates within a table of 40,671 records.

To examine the detail we have included in this map, you need to look at the PDF version: