Disguised unemployment in British agriculture

This paper highlights some important changes that are taking place in the composition of the agricultural and horticultural workforce in England and Wales. It suggests that the regular whole-time hired worker has been increasingly replaced on the one hand by the casual or contract worker and on the other by the family worker. There is also some evidence, at present anecdotal or at best circumstantial, that the children of farmers may be using the farm as an employment ‘refuge’ in a period in which employment opportunities in the economy as a whole are severely limited. This raises the question of whether the phenomenon of ‘disguised unemployment’ hitherto regarded as a feature of many less developed countries may be found among family-worked farms in England and Wales. It is important that future empirical investigations should attempt to establish whether this is indeed the case.