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Unemployment has
been a serious problem of the UK, a huge challenge for the government to
improve the country’s labour force. Somehow, through means of strategies
and intervention, signs that the UK is slowly winning against unemployment
are starting to show up. Although last 2006 the employment rate was
stagnant, playing between levelling off and up, the National Statistics
(2007) reported: “The number of unemployed people fell by 23,000 over the
quarter but increased by 133,000 over the year, to reach 1.69 million”.
This result showed that with the efforts to improve the labour market, the
UK is slowly recovering from unemployment rate, and is now boasting an
annual increase. Not only that, workers now last longer than expected. The
report also stated that the number of people in employment for the three
months ending in December 2006 was 29.04 million (National Statistics,
2007). The results are indeed good news as it levels up UK’s labour market
further. From 1983 to 1988, the unemployment rate in the UK is 10.9%. This
rate dropped to as low as 6.3% in 1999.
Different
government interventions have been implemented to help improve the UK
labour market. This study assumes that it there were key changes in
government strategies from 1991 to 2001. These changes will be explored in
this research. First, the demographic trends and rates of unemployment in
1991 and 2001 will be researched in the National Statistics office. The
data will be compared to identify changes in unemployment trends after 10
years. Changes in government interventions to improve UK employment rate
will be explored as well.
Problem Statement
Employment trends changes
over time, and so as the interventions used to improve employment. This
study will try to identify the changes in UK government’s strategy to
improve employment rates, specifically in the years 1991 and 2001. It aims
to explore the differences in demographics of unemployment trends from
those two different years. The following research questions will be
explored:
Ø
What are the
differences between the unemployment rate in 1991 and the unemployment
rate in 2001?
Ø
What are the
differences between the strategies used by the government to improve
unemployment rate in 1991 and the strategies used in 2001?
Ø
Did the
strategies used to improve unemployment improved from 1991 to 2001?
Ø
Is the
unemployment rate in 1991 higher compared to the unemployment rate in
2001?
Research Objectives
The objective of
the study is to be able to identify the demographic differences of
unemployment rates between 1991 and 2001; and to identify the differences
of government intervention to combat unemployment rates from 1991 to 2001.
The following are the goals of the study:
Ø
To conduct
research in UK National Statistics and obtain census data on unemployment
from 1991 to 2001.
Ø
To conduct an
in-depth literature research for documents on government programs that
target unemployment from 1991 to 2001.
Ø
To be able to
draw a conclusion regarding the trend of unemployment in the UK from 1991
to 2001.
Methodology
Secondary data will be used
to complete the research. Previous literatures and statistics will be used
to answer the problem of the study. Specifically, the study will search
for literatures that pertain to previous government project for improving
employment in the UK.
The research will
be descriptive and will deduce the hypothesis: “Government employment
strategies have improved from 1991 to 2001, but only produced little
result”.
Documents to be
collected are statistical data of employment trends from 1991 to 2001. It
will be obtained from the National Census Bureau or the National
Statistics office.
Data will be
analyzed using percentage analysis. On the other hand, a qualitative
interpretation will be conducted to identify the relationship between the
demographic trends in the UK from 1991 to 2001, and the evolution of
government interventions to improve employment rates. |
