Catalogue description Employment Exchanges Reports on Employment and Unemployment

In 1917, the Ministry of Labour inherited from the Labour Department of the Board of Trade its network of regional and local offices, and Employment Exchanges. These had originally been created as Labour Exchanges in 1909, becoming renamed Employment Exchanges in 1916, and being transferred to the newly created Ministry of Labour the following year. Until 1929 they operated under the aegis of the Employment Department, when they were transferred to the Establishments Department.

During the First World War, exchanges were instrumental in implementing manpower policies, notably conscription. After the armistice, attempts to use them to control demobilisation collapsed. With the introduction of out-of-work donation in 1919, exchange officials embarked on what was to become their main task in the inter-war period: the administration of various types of cash benefit to the unemployed. This work effectively eclipsed their original purpose as a clearing house between employers and the unemployed seeking employment. With the rise of mass unemployment, staff at the exchanges were used to supervise 'signing on'; to assess claims on the unemployment fund according to changing directives from the ministry; to pay benefit in appropriate cases; and to compile statistical returns which were regularly published by the Statistics Department in the Ministry of Labour Gazette.

During the Second World War, the exchanges were again involved in implementing manpower directives. They worked in co-ordination with teams of labour supply inspectors responsible to the Labour Supply Board. In industrial areas, local Labour Supply Committees were set up, replaced in 1942 by District Manpower Boards. These surveyed manpower resources and controlled labour supply within their areas, before being abolished in 1947.

After the War the exchanges acted as chief agencies for demobilisation and resettlement, especially in the rehabilitation and training of the disabled and the provision of vocational guidance and training for the young. They also continued to act as recruiting centres for the national service scheme.

As post-war administrative readjustments involved the creation of new ministries and the acquisition of different types of responsibility by old ones, Employment Exchanges were used by other government departments on an agency basis. Such services included the issue of clothing coupons while rationing continued; the issue of passports for the Passport Department of the Home Office; services for the Ministry of Health in connection with cheap or free milk schemes; and the refunding of income tax to the unemployed on behalf of the Board of Inland Revenue. More importantly, following the creation of the Ministry of National Insurance in 1945 and the National Assistance Board in 1948, the Employment Exchanges continued both to register and to pay benefit or assistance to the unemployed, as appropriate. In this way proof of unemployment and the provision of access to information about jobs, retraining schemes and so on was not divorced from the assessment of claims for different types of state support and the continuing compilation of unemployment statistics.

Work in local offices was supervised and co-ordinated by a system of regional offices: one in Scotland, one in Wales and nine in England (reduced to eight in 1958). Aside from their responsibilities relating to Employment Exchanges, the regional offices acted as the main agency for implementing all branches of ministry policy, especially in the area of industrial relations. Apart from co-ordinating industrial training and rehabilitation, they ensured the effective administration of minimum wage orders laid down by Trade Boards and Wages Councils, and Regional Industrial Relations Officers administered conciliation and arbitration services, as well as forewarning headquarters of the likelihood of future industrial unrest within their areas.

After the Second World War, a number of interdepartmental regional committees were set up aimed at improving industrial deployment, growth and the planning of vital services.