-- Employment Gazette states that the unemployment rate is expressed as the number of persons aged 18 and over, claiming unemployment and related benefits as a percentage of the workforce; the workforce consisting of employees in employment, the self-employed, the unemployed,people in the H.M. forces and on work-related government training schemes.
-- The unemployment statistics do not wholly reflect the true unemployment situation as the process by which statistics are collected has altered nearly twenty times since the early 1980's. Almost all of these changes have reduced the numbers of those eligible to register and thus the true number of unemployed is likely to be somewhat higher.
-- The area chosen is a Travel To Work Area. TTWA's have no perceptible physical boundaries and are continually changing. These changes are dependent on a number of social, economic and cultural influences such as occupation, transport and the individuals circumstances at home. P.Lloyd (1977), in his case study of Merseyside's manufacturing industries, states Liverpool's TTWA as including Bebington, Birkenhead, Bootle, Crosby, Ellesmere Port, Garston, Hoylake, Kirkby, Liverpool, Neston, Old Swan, Prescot, Regent Road, Wallasey and Walton. Although Lloyd's conception of Liverpool's TTWA dates back 16 years, the area will not have drastically altered since then.
-- Data for tables 2,3 & 4 and graphs 3,4 & 5 was taken from 'Extracts from Past Trends and Future Prospects - Urban Change in Liverpool 1961-2001'.
From table 1 and graphs 1 & 2, the general trends that are evident are that from 1983 Liverpool suffered a gradual, but substantial rise in unemployment and reached its highest rate in June 1986 when 106,432 people were unemployed - a steep 21.1 % of its workforce were out of work. After 1986, the figure dropped to 61,460 in December 1990 - a significant 45,000 less than four years before and the lowest its been during this ten year period, when only 12.1 % of its workforce was unemployed. After 1990, the number of unemployed gradually increased again until nine months ago when the figure was 73,684. The latest figure for October 1993 shows a slight decrease since April and now stands at 69,385 - a steady 14.6 % of Liverpool's workforce. Will it however, continue to decrease ?
In order to compare Liverpool's data with the national
average, it is necessary to compare the percentages because of the vast differences between population numbers in Liverpool and the U.K.(see graph 2). There has been a similar pattern of unemployment throughout the country in that the percentage increased to its highest rate in June 1986 when 13.7 % of the U.K.'s workforce was out of work. The figures then decrease to a low of 5.7 % in June 1990 - the same year that Liverpool experienced its lowest rate. Since then, numbers have again increased, to almost double the previous figure, in June of last year, when it was 10.7 %. The last figure for December 1993 has, congruous to Liverpool, decreased to 9.9 % and likewise it is necessary to ask whether it will continue to drop.
It is evident that during this ten year period, both Liverpool's and the U.K.'s unemployment statistics have fluctuated more or less simultaneously, ie. between 1983 & 1993 they have both increased, decreased and increased again. However, it is also evident that Liverpool's unemployment problem has been substantially worse in comparison with the U.K.'s as a whole. It is firstly apparent that from the beginning of this ten year period, Liverpool's figures for the rate of unemployment as a percentage of its workforce, have consistently been one and a half times those for the U.K. as a whole. This was the case until June 1986, and then subsequently, there was a substantial increase in Liverpool's unemployed in relation to the U.K.'s until exactly four years later, in June 1990, when Liverpool's percentage of unemployed was two and a half times greater than that of the U.K.'s. Since then, over the next three years there was a decrease until in 1993, the latest figure shows that Liverpool's proportion of the workforce that is unemployed is again one and a half times the national average.
In general, it can be said that the male and female unemployment figures fluctuate simultaneously, and predominantly they remain in co-ordination with Liverpool and the U.K. on the
whole.
In more detail, it is necessary to establish the specific groups of unemployment, such as different age groups and ethnic minorities and also to establish the main areas where unemployment has become a severe problem, such as manufacturing, other production industries, blue collar and white collar services.
Data for different age groups, ( see table 2 & graph 3 ) show that the highest unemployment rates are to be found in the youngest age category. Liverpool City Council (1987) reveal that if these various employment scheme placements were discounted, only approximately 13 % of economically active 16-19 year olds would have jobs. Unemployment rates in older age groups progressively decrease, with the exception of 55-59 year olds, as after redundancy, the prospect of employment is greatly reduced.
A further important characteristic of contemporary unemployment is the proportion of racial minorities out of work. The 1991 census disclosed that in its catchment area of Liverpool (an area different to the TTWA, so not comparable with Employment Gazette statistics), the unemployment rate among its black population was 27 % compared with 21 % for the white population.
It is necessary to briefly mention increases or decreases in the main areas of employment in Liverpool( see table 3 & graph 4.) Nationally, manufacturing employment has been in continuous decline throughout the period 1961-1985. However, the decline in Liverpool up to 1985 exceeded the national rate by 64 % compared to the national decline of 37 %. Liverpool's employment performance in blue collar services (ie. Transport, Communications, Distribution and Miscellaneous Services ) showed a contrast to national trends - a 50 % decline compared with an 8 % growth. The White Collar Services (ie. health, education, insurance, banking, public administration & defence) is the only local industrial sector to have experienced employment growth during this 25 year period, however insignificant compared to the national growth. The sector comprising of other production industries (including primary industries, utilities and construction) has suffered a decline in this period well in excess of the national average.
Finally, it is imperative to mention the duration of unemployment over recent years (see table 4 & graph 5). This factor implies that unemployment is not a recent phenomenon and that in the long-term absence of job opportunities, lack of formal wark has become a way of life for substantial sections of the population. Both locally and nationally, there has been a very notable increase in long-term unemployment (ie. over one year). In Liverpool in 1986, approx. 30,500 people were in long-term unemployment. The data and the graphs indicate that there is an unrelenting problem of perpetual unemployment.
LOCAL, NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL INFLUENCES ON LIVERPOOL'S UNEMPLOYMENT AND RECENT POLICIES
Liverpool's unemployment predicament has come about due to a number of local, national and international influences. Locally, industries (mainly manufacturing) have been closing down since the 1960's creating massive job losses and hence adding to the city's unemployment levels. What has been happening in Liverpool is just part of what has gone on widespread throughout the U.K. This change in the U.K. economy has come to be known as de-industrialisation.
Government policies and financial incentives in the post-war years brought new manufacturing industries to the Liverpool area and the early 1960's saw a growth in manufacturing with the arrival of car production industry. However, by the late 1960's it was evident that there was a massive loss of jobs in the port and also in the recently prospering manufacturing industries. Between 1966 & 1977, 350 plants closed or relocated and 40,000 jobs were lost.
In June 1970, Dunlop, one Liverpool's main sources of employment, was faced with the shutdown of its Walton site - potentially losing 1,000 workers. Its Speke factory closed the same month laying off 2,500 employees. In the 2 years before 1982, Dunlop faced losses of almost £2 million and as a consequence, planned to close four of the five departments making 325 workers redundant. These closures had dire effects on Liverpool's unemployment levels.
The list continues. In 1984, Tate & Lyle announced the closure of its syrup-making factory in Bootle. They were concerned about the suitability of the site and its ability to continue providing customers with reliable supplies. It would also have taken major capital expenditure to bring it up to modern standards and so a 118 year reign in Liverpool ended and more redundancies resulted.
The most recent downfall of employment in Liverpool occurred last year when after 165 years of shipbuilding in Birkenhead, the Cammell Laird Shipyard closed on the 30th of July. In 1988, at the Shipyard 2,300 jobs were lost and only 5 years later its plan to gain one of three new Warships from the Ministry of Defence failed thus prompting the sites closure, creating more unemployment for its long-term workers.
The general antecedent for these closures was the declining relative economic importance of the port and a continuing shift of economic activity to the South and the East. The compensatory service sector growth that occurred nationally failed in Liverpool (see table 3 and graph 4) and hence unemployment continued to increase. In Merseyside, between 1978 & 1987, 20,455 jobs were lost due to closures in the manufacturing industry - most of which were in Speke, Kirkby & Halewood.
Decentralisation of industry has also occurred with more attraction to new plants to locate in peripheral areas, and again Liverpool is overlooked. The mass closures in the area are just a taste of what has happened on a much larger, national scale.
De-industrialisation and decentralisation are two factors in the notion of internationalisation and the New International Division of Labour. Within this phenomena, MNC's are the new form of ownership through which Merseyside was ensnared by external control and branch plants. Foreign trade, foreign investment and financial (portfolio) investment are the ways in which host nations control their companies. MNC's in Liverpool, ie. Ford, Dunlop and Tate & Lyle have been deprived of these forms of capital investment and lost out to other national and international competition, hence closures and redundancies are commonplace.
This adds up to a changing international economy and a national economy finding it difficult to adjust to these changes. Merseyside, and in particular Liverpool, has been targeted for economic restructuring in the form of the much needed inner-urban policies. Initially prompted by high unemployment rates, the failure of the Welfare State and racial issues becoming evident,
the Labour Government of the 1960's and Conservative Government of the early 1970's introduced urban experiments which helped to foster the later, more permanent urban policy.
Under the Labour Government of the late 1970's, the 1977 White Paper - Policy for the Inner Cities - was published. Local Authorities were to tackle inner area problems, with local communities, voluntary bodies, the private sector and central government implementing policies via the New Urban Programme, the Partnerships (the Liverpool Partnership received only minimal funding) and Industrial Improvement Areas - which aimed to attract private sector investment back into the inner cities. These measures were relatively successful in creating new jobs but not many. However, it was under the new Conservative Government from 1979 that the U.K. saw an improved intensification of inner city projects.
One of the first measures thought up at the end of the 1970's was the initiation of 'Enterprise Zones'. One was created in Speke, where unregulated, free enterprise was encouraged with free a movement of goods, labour and capital, in an old industrial area. However, there was little job creation and on the whole they proved to be just a political experiment by the Conservative Government. By 1987, it was announced that there would be no added extension to the Enterprise Zones.
In 1981, the Department of the Environment inaugurated the Merseyside Development Corporation (see figure 4). Its aim was to regenerate the area and attract private investment. It has been successful in physical renovation (ie. the Albert Docks) but less in job creation. Its aim was to finish within 5 years, but it is still around so that's promising. However, its overall success with the International Garden Festival for example, is debatable.
As the governments response to the 1981 Toxteth riots, Michael Heseltine created a Task Force whose intent was to expand public sector investment in Merseyside. This led to the launch of City Action Teams in 1985, whose role was to ensure co-ordination at a 'city' level between inner city programmes and initiatives and different governmental departments. It specialized in economic development of inner areas and in doing so, supported training schemes, science parks (e.g. Wavertree Technology Park), small businesses and industrial improvement projects. Their success is dubious as they have not sought out local government co-ordination. In correspondence with the CATS, eight Task Forces were set up in 1986. They attempted to reduce local unemployment. Nevertheless, they were more concerned with targeting existing jobs rather than creating new ones and working with a small budget, their failure is inevitable.
In 1988, Action For Cities was launched which attempted to
collaborate what improvements had already been made and what initiatives and developments were to come. Later on that year, the Merseyside Training and Enterprise Council was set in motion by the Department of Employment. Its aim was to plan and deliver training, develop small businesses and self-employment and overall contribute to economic growth in the area - in effect by privatising local government. It remains to be seen whether the TEC's have made a substantial enough impact on local employment rates but there have been no marked improvements to date.
The most recent initiative to create local partnerships between the public and private sectors was announced in 1991, again by Michael Heseltine,and was launched in 1992. It is called City Challenge and is based on Liverpool city centre East (see figure 5). Whereas other programmes have been based in older, more industrial areas or mixed use sites, City Challenge is working with run-down residential sites and general physical regeneration. It is also aiming to promote employment and training and boost community confidence. Jobs have been created in the construction industry through this project and its target is set at 3000 new jobs in the area by 1997. However most of these jobs are temporary. It has been successful in attracting some private investment - Glaxo have promised £1 million for a Neurological Centre in the area.
Liverpool has always attempted to provide many Youth Training Schemes as it is obvious that this age group is severely affected by the threat of unemployment and has caused great concern. The YTS is seen as 'at least a wage', however minimal. Nonetheless, they are temporary and even when employed there is the ever present threat of closures and redundancies.
CONCLUSION
Liverpool's population has been declining since the late 1930's (approximate figures - 867,000 in 1937 to 448,000 in 1991). The city has experienced a decentralisation of population and of industry over the last few decades and unemployment, especially in the inner city areas, rose to a record high of 21.1% in the mid 1980's. Cities have become areas of social and economic deprivation and the possibility of Liverpool becoming an industrial ghost-town is becoming stark reality.
Urban projects of the past 15 years have come, and some of them gone, a miscellany of programmes that the Conservative Government have planned and developed in a way that makes them appear caring and innovative. So why haven't they achieved their goals and hence assisted the people that really matter ? However, with such a divergent programme as inner-city policy there will inevitably be successes; there has been some physical development through Urban Development Corporations and Enterprise Zones but these seem inadequate in dealing with contemporary urban problems - as the gains do not necessarily 'trickle down to the poor' and this should underlie the basic philosophy of inner-city reconstruction.
Given the existence of these negative elements, it is necessary to ask the question, "Do the cities have a future ?" As we are a crowded island, dense urban development seems the only way to preserve the countryside environment for recreation and agriculture with large cities still offering maximum choices for people in their spending, their social life and their entertainment. Dense urban settlement offers more efficient ways of distributing goods and services and there are still many people who cannot readily move or be moved from cities - the old, single-parent families, the poor, students and ethnic groups - social equity insists that their interests cannot merely be ignored.
It is therefore in everybody's interest to regenerate the cities with schemes of environmental improvement which will optimistically attract back into cities a more affluent population of home owners who can create a more mixed social composition. All such schemes create one element of the future of cities, that is , bringing in extra spending and creating a variety of new jobs, many of which can be targeted to local residents.
It is also necessary to ask the question, "What of production?" The key strategy in restoring the cities role of production lies in information linkages. A future justification for investment in large cities is needed which requires a prior public investment to ensure that large cities offer a dense
telecommunications mesh. Liverpool requires large scale projects to prove that it's not too late, that it can still prosper, that it does have a future within the U.K., Europe and the World - a high speed rail link with the South East and the Channel Tunnel
(opening in the spring), expansion of Speke Airport and a Mersey Barrage perhaps ? These and a complete renovation of run-down inner areas (such as the redevelopment plans of City Challenge), with more emphasis on social provision and community schemes with improvements in education, training and job opportunities for local people. Once these are achieved public and private investment will be more feasible and Liverpool and other cities can start afresh in the process of regeneration.
APPENDIX
FIGURE 1 - The United Kingdom.
FIGURE 2 - Merseyside and Liverpool.
FIGURE 3 - Enterprise Zones, UDC's and Task Forces in the U.K.
FIGURE 4 - Area Covered by Merseyside Development Corporation.
FIGURE 5 - Area Covered by City Challenge.
FIGURE 6 - Organisations Involved in Economic Development in Liverpool.
TABLE 1 - Unemployment Statistics for Liverpool and the U.K.
TABLE 2 - Liverpool's Claimant Unemployed by Age.
TABLE 3 - Employment Changes by Sectors-Liverpool and the U.K.
TABLE 4 - Duration of Unemployment- Liverpool and the U.K.
GRAPH 1 - Unemployment in Liverpool.
GRAPH 2 - Liverpool's and the U.K.'s Unemployment as a Percentage of Workforce.
GRAPH 3 - Liverpool's Unemployed Claimants by Age.
GRAPH 4 - Employment Changes by Sectors- Liverpool and the U.K.
GRAPH 5 - Duration of Unemployment-Liverpool and the U.K.
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