Why It Matters Unemployed Adults with Children
Summary
We have determined the scope of economically impaired households, with and without dependents, in your neighbourhood.
Interpretation
| Dataset | Explanation |
|---|---|
| Walulel Percentage (%) of households with dependent children aged 0-4 years | This tells you the percentage of all the households in your neighbourhood that are responsible for the rearing and development of a minor. |
| Walulel Percentage (%) of households with no adult in employment | This tells you the percentage of all the households in your neighbourhood that have no recorded means of non-clandestine income, other than via state support. |
| Walulel Percentage (%) of households with dependent children and no adult in employment | This tells you the percentage of all the households in your neighbourhood that have no recorded means of non-clandestine income, other than via state support, but who, have children who are dependent on them. |
| Walulel Percentage (%) of households with no dependent children and no adult in employment | This tells you the percentage of all the households in your neighbourhood that have no recorded means of non-clandestine income, other than via state support, and are without dependent children. |
| Walulel Percentage (%) of households with dependent children of any age | This tells you the percentage of all the households in your neighbourhood that are responsible for the rearing and development of a child. |
| Walulel Percentage (%) of households in which (at least) one person lives with a long-term health problem or disability | This tells you the percentage of all the households in your neighbourhood that (in conjunction with the state) are responsible for supporting at least one person living with a long-term health problem or disability. |
| Walulel Percentage (%) of households with dependent children and in which (at least) one person in the household is unemployed or has a long-term disability | This tells you the percentage of all the households in your neighbourhood that (in conjunction with the state) are responsible for supporting at least one person living with a long-term health problem or disability, and are responsible for the rearing and development of a child. |
| Walulel Percentage (%) of households without dependent children and in which (at least) one person in the household is unemployed or has a long-term disability | This tells you the percentage of all the households in your neighbourhood that (in conjunction with the state) are responsible for supporting at least one person living with a long-term health problem or disability, but are not responsible for the rearing and development of a child. |
Definition
Economically impaired households deal with all households where no-one aged 16 or over is in employment. Such people may be unemployed or economically inactive. Economically inactive members may be unavailable to work because of family commitments, retirement or study, or unable to work through sickness or disability. The keywords can be defined as follows:
| Term | Explanation |
|---|---|
| Dependent children | Those living with their parent(s) and are either aged under 16 years or aged 16 to 18 years and in full time education. Children aged 16 to 18 years who have a spouse, partner or child living in the household are not classified as dependent children. |
| Household | A single person, or a group of people living at the same address who have the address as their only or main residence and either share one main meal a day or share living accommodation (or both). |
| Unemployed | People without a job who were available to start work in the two weeks following their interview and who had either looked for work in the four weeks prior to interview or were waiting to start a job they had already obtained. |
Why the metric matters from a commercial inhabitant’s perspective
The proportion of economically impaired residents in a neighbourhood is a crude indicator of the level of disposable income that local residents’ have, and therefore can inform commercial inhabitants on the consumption habits residents are likely to exhibit. Although unplanned unemployment or health deterioration has a greater impact on residents’ economic strength than retirement, participation in the workforce is a significant determinant of income and consumption.
Evidence shows that the drops in consumption are higher for those who retire than those who are unemployed. Unemployment is accompanied by lower household consumption but the drop after retirement tends to be greater, largely because amounts of food consumed away from home, transport and clothing etc., are all no longer required. In addition, in neighbourhoods experiencing relatively high levels of economic impairment, commercial inhabitants will notice the demand for non-essential or “discretionary goods” is lower, whereas demand for addictive goods remains on a par with non-economically impaired neighbourhoods.
Why the metric matters from a residential inhabitant’s perspective
The prevalence of economically impaired households in your neighbourhood will impact on the feel of a neighbourhood. There is also a strong correlation between high proportions of certain social ills such as crime, delinquency, drug addiction, family disintegration.
Even more so where dependent children are primarily cared for by the economically impaired. Social problems are not however evident in all areas that are home to higher levels of economically impaired households. A combination of difficult access to credit and the absence of successful business precedence often prevents private sector operators PO from considering economically impaired areas when deciding where to focus the provision of their goods and services.
Nevertheless, areas with a higher prevalence of economically impaired households, often experience greater levels of state provision of services. On the upside, there is good evidence to show that residents of neighbourhoods with higher than normal rates of economically impaired households experience greater levels of community cohesion. This is because such neighbourhoods have a greater number of residents who are physically present, which creates far more opportunities for neighbourly interaction than is experienced in neighbourhoods with the highest rates of employment.
(Photograph: Wikimedia Commons)
General commentary
The number of economically impaired households in the UK is measured at the national level by the Labour Force Survey and covers people who meet the definition of unemployment specified by the International Labour Organisation Unemployment data tells us a great deal about the economic health of a nation.
In the UK, government departments use unemployment figures and other labour market indicators to manage the labour market and make decisions which affect the country at a macro-economic level. The Greater London Authority uses unemployment measures in conjunction with multiple indices of deprivation as de facto measures to better understand where people are living in hardship in our capital. In areas with few jobs on offer and a smaller employed workforce it has been traditionally been considered that such areas would provide living conditions associated with hardship however more recently the nature of part-time work, as the “gig economy” matures, and the black economy being unrecorded in governance statistics, unemployment alone as a primary measure of hardship is deemed by many to be a somewhat misleading measure.
Unemployment statistics also show us whether the inputs needed to produce a good or service- such as homes shops and offices, money or knowledge-are optimally balanced to ensure that none of these inputs are being oversupplied or undersupplied to the detriment of the local job market offering jobs that match the skills, needs and wants of the resident population. If the local job market offering does not utilise the available labour pool, then the other inputs needed to produce a good or service will not be in equilibrium and will, in fact, be undersupplied - for example local retail will be undersupplied because these people do not have funds to spend, local housing will be undersupplied because private companies will know there is no market there. As private capital cannot support these people, they are then in reliance on state help or are part of an alternative economy.
Trivia
Want to know where in the world to head to be certain to avoid unemployment? Think small; Monaco and Andorra are two places which have posted a zero percent unemployment rate.
This is possible only in small places where the number of jobs available is all taken up and, in fact, in the case of Monaco has to import workers from neighbouring France in order to fill the demand for service jobs at the local upscale casinos and hotels.
History
The Act for the Relief of the Poor 1601, was one of the world’s first government-sponsored welfare programs. It distinguished between those who were unable to work and those who refused employment. Under the Poor Law systems of England and Wales, Scotland and Ireland, workhouses were created where people who were unable to support themselves, could go to live and work. These were not prisons, and people could come and go but conditions were tough and as being (what was then called) a “vagrant” was still illegal, many had little choice but to admit themselves.
By the eighteenth century, a full sixty per cent of Londoners were still likely to find themselves in receipt of charity, or aid from the local parish when out of work, elderly or infirm. By 1760 approximately 2 per cent of the population of London resided in workhouses, more of which had been created by parishes of London.
Data on employment only started to be captured in the late nineteenth century and even then, it was based only on employment levels amongst trade union members, so it did not capture all the employed. Extrapolations of this data, therefore, indicate employment levels in this period of anything from 2 to 10 percent.
From the early twentieth century onward, the introduction of a compulsory national scheme of insurance against unemployment was introduced and subsequent acts meant that it covered more and more people. Excluding the war years, unemployment in the twentieth century had peaks and troughs, from the roaring 20s where it reached a low of 2.6% in June 1920, to a high of 23.4% in May 1921 after the Wall Street Crash. Long periods of relatively high unemployment rates were also recorded in the UK in the Depression of the early 1930s.
In 1948 National Insurance expanded to cover all male and female employees aged 15 and over. The data on the unemployed from 1948 to 1982 is referred to as the registrant count as it referred to the number of people registered at government offices as looking for work. The lowest recorded unemployment rate in this period is 1% in the mid-1950s when manufacturing in London was at its peak and the City was enjoying new status as the forum for international foreign exchange, the highest was in September 1982 when it reached 14% following government attempts to control inflation and the decline of manufacturing which led to the closure of the majority of London’s still surviving factories.