Heather Trickey, Karen Kellard, Robert Walker, Karl Ashworth and Alison Smith, Unemployment and Jobseeking: Two Years On, London: HMSO/Department of Social Security Research Report no. 87, 1998, £38.00, viii+203 pp.

Mike Campbell, with Ian Sanderson and Fiona Walton, Local Response to Long-term Unemployment, York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation/York Publishing Services, 1998, £12.95 paperback, v+58 pp.

These two reports are both concerned with the unemployed and their futures. One (carried out by the Centre for Research in Social Policy at Loughborough University for the Department of Social Security) tracks the movements of a representative sample of unemployed people and explains ‘success’ in the labour market in terms of a variety of personal characteristics and experiences. The other – commissioned by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and written by researchers from the Policy Research Institute at Leeds Metropolitan University – reviews policies to assist the long-term unemployed. In this review the first will be referred to as the DSS study and the second as the JRF report.