{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.029260450160771705, 'fraction_numerical': 0.00482315112540193, 'mean_word_length': 5.088062622309198, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Jochen Clasen, Paying the Jobless: A Comparison of Unemployment Benefit Policies in Great Britain and Germany , Avebury, Aldershot, 1994, xi + 243 pp., hard £35.00.

The partiality of the available evidence is reflected in other ways. The use of short-time working in slack periods receives far too little attention its adoption in mining and textiles is noted, but its role in engineering, boots and shoes and various branches of metal working remains unacknowledged. Nor is its relationship to unemployment as such fully explored. Instead, we are presented with the picture as painted by contemporary commentators: that the workforce divided itself neatly into those in 'regular' employment and those with no employment with the exception of those casual trades (largely dockers and construction workers) which reformers wanted to reorganise. Early twentieth-century manual workers experienced little 'regular' employment as we would currently understand it: in part because the demand for labour among a multiplicity of small firms remained fluid, in part because the physical strength required to work 'regularly' in many blue-collar jobs was beyond the capacities of most labourers. This issue is not merely of antiquarian significance. As Burnett notes, the recent expansion in self-employment, part-time work, short-term contracts features of our 'new' flexible labour market has again blurred apparently clear distinctions between the employed and the unemployed. 'Unemployment', then as now, is not experienced simply in terms of hours worked (or not) each week, but is rather more subtle involving (as it must) an appreciation of income required to meet existing commitments and time available within which such income can be earned. This book feels too rushed a production to tackle such subtleties. Instead, it takes the meaning of 'unemployment' as read. There is some unnecessary repetition of explanation, figures and even quotation in the first two chapters; sources are irregularly cited in the footnotes. Such slight irritations could have been edited out. More seriously, and here the blame passes firmly to the publishers, at least one (apparently rather good) chapter is ruined by the disappearance of half the text. Let those who purchase the book check pp. 50-85 as, in the copy sent to your reviewer, half were totally blank. In summary, this book is extremely useful in recalling the damage caused by unemployment in the past to individuals, families, communities. It reveals the price paid in terms of health, well-being and general employability and general social conformity. It reminds us that, left to its own devices, a free market does not secure full or even near full employment however much politicians might want to claim otherwise. It rescues unemployment from its recent decline into a residual variable in the assessment of economic growth. In the process, unfortunately, it fails to examine how unemployment itself has varied (and varies) between different occupational sectors thereby, I would argue, underestimating the toll taken by economic recession on human lives.