The First National Unemployment Survey

The 1891 census asked Canadians if they had been unemployed in the week preceding the taking of the census. On the basis of a preliminary analysis of responses from working class areas in British Columbia, we comment on the nature of this source, and on the possibility of using it to determine both the extent of unemployment and the characteristics of the unemployed. We demonstrate our conclusion that this source has significant utility by testing the hypothesis that unemployment was a structural problem in the industrial capitalist labour market and not simply a result of specific deficiencies in part of the labour force. Resume Le recensement de 1891 demanda aux Canadiens s'ils avaient ete sans travail dans le semaine precedant le recensement. Une analyse preliminaire des reponses provenant des quartiers ouvriers de la Colombie Britannique nous permet de commenter cette source et d'etudier son utilite pour determiner l'etendue du chomage et les caracteristiques des sans-travail. Nous concluons qu'il s'agit d'une source importante pour verifier l'hypothese selon laquelle le chomage presentait un probleme struturel dans le marche capitaliste du travail et η 'etait pas simplement le resultat de deficiences specifiques de la force de travail

American Community Survey · Census · Demographic economics · Economic growth · Economics · Geography · Population · Sociology · Unemployment · Canadian Identity and History · Demography

• Research note

  Eric W Sager•The History of the Family•1998

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• Gender and Occupational Identity in a Canadian Census

  Kris Inwood, Richard Reid•Historical Methods A Journal of…•2001

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