This book looks at important factors which contribute towards high unemployment in Britain, including macroeconomic policy, pay bargaining, education and training issues, urban and regional problems and racial disadvantage. It looks at the lessons for Britain of the performance of the US, German, Swedish and Japanese economies. The main conclusion of the book is that we need to refocus our attention back to the performance of the economy as a whole as the main driving force behind unemployment and the way that the macroeconomy is constrained by pay bargaining arrangements in different countries. The corollary is not that macroeconomic issues such as training are unimportant, but that they deserve less weight than was fashionable in the 1980s.
