Employment

This chapter provides an overview of the implications of the White Paper for employment (1). There is one programme area specifically concerned with this matter — Trade, Industry, Energy and Employment. However, the effects of public spending in this area represent only a minor part of the overall impact of government expenditure on employment. It is important to recognise at the start that employment is not the sole objective of government spending. It has been plain from government rhetoric in recent years that control of inflation has been regarded as the major policy target and that the employment objective has, in the short term, been ignored in order to reduce inflation. The government has argued that this is the only means of securing jobs in the long term, although many would question whether the reduction in inflation has been worth the cost incurred in terms of idle resources, or at least whether the same end could not have been achieved more efficiently. Indeed, many retain doubts as to whether the strategy will solve the problem of unemployment even in the long term. (See, for example, Aaronovitch, 1981).