The Great Britain Historical Database has been assembled as part of the ongoing Great Britain Historical GIS Project. The project aims to trace the emergence of the north-south divide in Britain and to provide a synoptic view of the human geography of Britain at sub-county scales. Further information about the project is available on A Vision of Britain webpages, where users can browse the database's documentation system online.

This study assembles historical data from the National Insurance system, plus some data from trade union welfare systems gathered and published by the Board of Trade Labour Department. The data were computerised by the Great Britain Historical GIS Project. They form part of the Great Britain Historical Database, which contains a wide range of geographically-located statistics, selected to trace the emergence of the north-south divide in Britain and to provide a synoptic view of the human geography of Britain, generally at sub-county scales.

Most of the data here was originally published by the Ministry of Labour, either in the Labour Gazette, later the Employment Gazette, or in the specialised Local Unemployment Index (LUI), published between 1927 and 1939. The largest dataset here is a complete transcription of the LUI data for each January, April, July and October from January 1927 to July 1939 inclusive, the most detailed information that exists on the geography of the inter-war depression, other than the 1931 census.

Unlike census data, these data concern a wide range of regions, "divisions", "districts", towns and sometimes areas within towns, seldom defined (the LUI data do list counties). The study therefore also includes two specially constructed gazetteers which attempt to provide towns and areas within towns with point coordinates. Another limitation is that these data generally provide counts of the unemployed, but not counts of the insured, or numbers in work, so calculation of rates often requires data from other sources such as the census. The study also includes two transcriptions from unpublished tabulations in the National Archives, relating to unemployment in 1928 and 1933.

Please note: this study does not include information on named individuals and would therefore not be useful for personal family history research.

For the second edition (February 2024), the data was updated; data running up to 1974 has been added and the former study 3711 has been incorporated.

• Residents refer to Singapore Citizens and Permanent Residents.
• Long-term unemployed refers to persons aged fifteen years and over who have been unemployed for at least 25 weeks.
• Annual figures are the simple averages of the non-seasonally adjusted unemployment figures obtained at quarterly intervals.
• Annual average data for 2000 are not available as data on duration of unemployment was not collected in the Population Census 2000 (June).

Source: Labour Force Survey, Manpower Research & Statistics Department, MOM, except data for June 1995, and June 2005, which are from the General Household Surveys 1995 & 2005 conducted by Department of Statistics, Ministry of Trade and Industry.