The 1919-20 reduction in working hours accompanied by the maintenance of the weekly wage has been argued to underlie the rapid rise in unemployment in Britain in the early 1920s and some of the persistence of unemployment through to 1939. To what extent can these aspects of interwar unemployment be attributed to this supply-side change?

Unemployment was persistently high during the inter-war years at 10.9% (Feinstein) compared to an average of 5% pre-WWI. Even within the inter-war period there were large differences in this rate – jumping from 17% in 1921 to 9.7% in 1927 and reaching a peak of 22.1% in 1932 (Benjamin and Kochin). [...]