Employability and its Relevance for the Management of the Live Register

This paper considers the issue of whether the 140,000 people still on the Live Register at a time of boom contained a high proportion of unemployables. It devises a clear operational definition of employability and, using both national and local data, concluds that the proportion of persons on the Register who could be considered unemployable was quite small - no more than about 10 per cent. It examines the factors which seem to lead to unemployability (poor education, older age, location) and considers the possibility of profiling those on the Register to improve the effectiveness of placement procedures for jobs and training.