Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-15T14:21:38.611Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Full Employment in a Market Economy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 March 2020

Andrew Britton
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The occasion for this conference is the 50th anniversary of the white paper on Employment Policy, Cmnd. 6527, presented by the Minister of Reconstruction to Parliament in May 1944. It is a short paper, just 3 pages long, and much of that length is devoted to the special difficulties in the labour market that were expected during the transition from war to peace. The detailed policy proposals set out in the white paper were not implemented in quite the way that was foreseen. Nevertheless this slim document did signal a new approach to economic policy quite different to the approach of governments pre-war. The most important sentence is the first. ‘The Government accept as one of their primary aims and responsibilities the maintenance of a high and stable level of employment after the war’. The paper would have been a landmark in the history of economic policy if it had said no more than that.

Type
Articles
Information
National Institute Economic Review , Volume 150 , November 1994 , pp. 62 - 72
Copyright
Copyright © 1994 National Institute of Economic and Social Research

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

This talk was given by the Institute's director to a Conference on ‘Looking Forward to Full Employment, organised by the Trades Union Congress and the Employment Policy Institute earlier this year.