Extensive research has been conducted on the concept of jobless recoveries and their potential causes, primarily focused on the United States from the 1990s. This paper finds that the prolonged employment downturn following the brief 1980–1981 recession in Britain qualifies as a jobless recovery and then investigates possible contributing factors: labor reallocation across industries, regional employment changes, and job polarization. The United States, which did not have a jobless recovery from the early 1980s recession, is taken as a comparison case. I find that the leading candidate explanation for this jobless recovery is the reallocation of labor across industries. This suggests an important role for structural change in the early 1980s recession and in jobless recoveries more generally.

人们对失业复苏的概念及其潜在原因进行了广泛的研究，主要集中在 20 世纪 90 年代的美国。本文发现，英国 1980-1981 年短暂衰退之后的长期就业低迷符合无就业复苏的条件，然后调查了可能的影响因素：跨行业的劳动力重新分配、地区就业变化和就业两极分化。美国没有从 20 世纪 80 年代初的经济衰退中实现失业复苏，因此被作为对比案例。我发现，对于这种无就业复苏的主要候选解释是劳动力在各个行业的重新分配。这表明结构性变革在 20 世纪 80 年代初的经济衰退和更广泛的失业复苏中发挥着重要作用。