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Title: The Social Structure of Unemployment in the United States: 1910

Citation Type: Working Paper

Publication Year: 2001

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Abstract: Unemployment haunted nineteenth and early twentieth-century workers. Moreeven than low pay, irregular work scarred the lives of working men and women and wasa source of constant anxiety and periodic hardship. Seasonal work, business cycles, andfluctuations in the prosperity of individual firms all meant that workers frequently foundthemselves without employment. The loss of work was serious because very few earnedenough to tide themselves and their families over periods of unemployment withoutserious deprivation, unless supplemental earnings from wives, children, or another jobboosted household earnings. Steady work, therefore, separated the lucky workers fromthe rest, and unemployment composed one of the key elements in structures of inequality.It is also one of the only dimensions of inequality measurable with the 1910 U. S.census

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Authors: America at the Millennium Project,

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Publication Number: 2

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Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Labor Force and Occupational Structure

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