British Unemployment And Government's Countermeasures Since World War Two

Unemployment has aroused general concern among western countries since the 17th century. According to labor economy, it is a byproduct of social mass production due to imbalance between the supply and demand of labor. On the one hand, the pressure of unemployment is expected to benefit the discipline among the labor. However, many people have noticed that high rate of unemployment not only affects healthy development of economy, but also leads to social turbulence. Therefore, full employment (the rate of unemployment is under 4-5%) has been as the target of economic policies in many capitalist countries, under the influence of Keynes's thoughts since the very beginning of the 20th century although in the dynamic economy, it is almost out of the question to keep constant balance between supply and demand of labor.The Great Britain is the first country to undertake the industrial revolution in the world and can be dated from the early 17th century when it began to deal with unemployment issue. The present thesis reviews the development of unemployment in Britain after World War Two and British governments' countermeasures against the background of globalization to see what Britain has achieved on this road and how it has dealt with the relationship between different sides, especially the management of Thatcher and Blair governments. Thatcher has sang high praise of the liberal economy and taken such radical policies as denationalization, cutting down on income tax and public expenditure while Mr. Blair has put forward "The Third Way" Policy and promoted many plans such as "New Deal" with the slogan of "work pays". And then it illustrates what can be learned from Britain to improve China's own employment polices and social security system as well. Finally, the thesis arrives at a conclusion that the existence of unemployment does not mean something has gone wrong with the economy, but it actually results from the self-adjustment of economic structure. Good distribution of productive, social resources and the building of sound social security system are conducive to reducing the loss brought by unemployment to the smallest degree.