John Burnett & Proffessor John Burnett 
Idle Hands [PDF ebook] 
The Experience of Unemployment, 1790-1990

Idle Hands is the first major social history of unemployment in Britain covering the last 200 years. It focuses on the experiences of working people in becoming unemployed, coping with unemployment and searching for work, and their reactions and responses to their problems. Direct evidence of the impact of unemployment drawn from extensive personal biographies complements economic and statistical analysis.