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This paper investigates the discrepancy between recorded unemployment and real unemployment in the regions of Great Britain. The study was prompted in part by the numerous attempts made to measure hidden unemployment for the US economy (see MINCER(5)), but it differs from earlier studies on two counts. First, unlike these earlier studies, which have concentrated on measuring hidden cyclical unemployment, an attempt is made here to explore the possibility of measuring the structural variety of hidden employment. Second, a different method has been used to calculate hidden cyclical unemployment than in earlier studies.
The paper is in five parts. Part I examines the gap between real unemployment and recorded unemployment, and argues for a division of this gap into cyclical and structural components. The second part-describes operationally useful methods of measuring hidden unemployment. In parts 3 and 4, the methods of measuring hidden unemployment are applied to the regions of Great Britain and to a sample of North-West localities. Part 5 compares the findings with two earlier studies (CORRY and ROBERTS (2) and STILWELL (8)). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with the relationship between activity rates and unemployment in the United Kingdom, in the period 1951-66. An activity rate is usually defined as the percentage of a particular population who are in the labor force. These rates are used in the context of utilization of labor resources, often being cited as evidence of the under-utilization of scarce manpower. Contemporary interest in the facts about British activity rates has grown as the economy enters what is apparently a period of chronic labor shortage. Recent forecasts indicate that only very small increases in the working population are likely in the next decade because of the low birth-rate in the early fifties combined with the possibility of a rise in the school leaving age and the reduction in the rate of immigration. The object of this paper is to see whether the changing pattern of activity rates observed in the U.K. over the period 1951-66 is connected with the fluctuating pattern of unemployment, and to attempt some tentative estimates of disguised unemployment. There are, of course, many other aspects of activity rates which one could examine. Any change in the economic alternatives available to the household as a decision making unit, for example, the prices of durable goods, pension facilities or other social security payments, are likely to affect the three-fold choice amongst leisure, unpaid work and paid work, and so change the propensity of the population to take up paid work in the labor force. It is these sorts of influences that we would expect to correlate with the secular trace of activity rates-if (and here it is a matter of empirical evidence)-economic variables do have such an effect.