Table 20.

Number of unemployed and unemployment rates in 1977

Comment:

The following are taken directly from the article by Robinson (see above)

"As with the acknowledged unemployed, the hidden unemployed consist predominantly of young people and adult women. These two groups account for 52% of the labour force, but for 72% of the acknowledged unemployed and 79% of the hidden unemployed. To describe the attachment of these people to the labour force as marginal, because they are often not the only family income earners and because their unemployment does not lead to poverty and deprivation, is to talk in terms of the past, not the present. When 20% of young people cannot find jobs, their attachment to the labour force is marginal because they are kept out..."

"These hidden unemployed are "hidden" because they do not conform to the statistical definition of unemployment used in the monthly labour force survey... Statistics Canada's definition leaves out the many thousands who are without work, who want to work, but who had not looked for work during the four weeks before the survey. In 1976, there were on the average 455,000 people who had lost or been laid off from their previous job. They had not quit voluntarily. But neither had they looked for work during the previous four weeks. Most of them had, however, looked for work in the previous six months, and the figures make it clear that many of them gave up because they came to the conclusion that there was no work to be found. These 455,000 people were the hidden unemployed in 1976."