Chapter 8: Managing the risk of unemployment.

This chapter focuses on the strategies for managing the risk of unemployment. The chapter begins with a discussion of the shifting labour and welfare markets in Great Britain, charting in more detail how increasing risks of unemployment have occurred at the same time as significant reductions in safety net provision. The assumptions on which these policies have been pursued are questioned. In light of these changes, the chapter then examines respondents' experiences and views in two main areas. First, the way people, particularly those most constrained by income, plan for the future, including any risk of unemployment they may perceive and second, the welfare views of the respondents on who do they believe should support people who are unemployed? The chapter highlights the considerable structural barriers to planning amongst lower income households and how a hierarchy of planning means that unemployment risks are amongst the last to be addressed at an individual level. An examination of welfare views reveals some potentially far reaching assumptions and beliefs about collective state insurance and its role in supporting unemployed people. The chapter ends by reflecting more broadly on the implications of shifts in welfare policy, and possibly in welfare views.