The official figures published by the Board of Trade gives the average percentage of unemployed in the Trade Unions of the skilled trades as follows.

To the general average we have appended for comparison the average for the shipbuilding and boiler-making trades, so as to illustrate the violence of the oscillations in a fluctuating trade:-- General per cent.

Ship-building, etc.
1884 7.15 20.8 1885 8.55 22.2 1886 9.55 21.6 1887 7.15 16.7 1888 4.15 7.3 1889 2.05 2.0 1890 2.10 3.4 1891 3.40 5.7 1892 6.20 10.9 1893 7.70 17.0 1894 7.70 16.2 1895 6.05 13.0 1896 3.50 9.5 1897 3.65 8.6 1898 3.15 4.7 1899 2.40 2.1 1900 2.85 2.3 1901 3.80 3.6 1902 4.60 8.3 1903 5.30 11.7 These figures make it quite evident that the permanent causes of irregular employment, e.g., weather in the building and riverside trades, season in the dressmaking and confectionery trades, and the other factors of leakage and displacement which throw out of work from time to time numbers of workers, are, taken in the aggregate, responsible only for a small proportion of the unemployment in the staple trades of the country.
The significance of such figures as these can scarcely be over- estimated.

Although it might fairly be urged that the lowest dip in trade depression truly represented the injury inflicted on the labouring-classes by trade fluctuations, we will omit the year 1886, and take 1887 as a representative period of ordinary trade depression.

The figures quoted above are supported by Trade Union statistics, which show that in that year among the strongest Trade Unions in the country, consisting of the picked men in each trade, no less than 71 in every 1000, or over 7 per cent., were continuously out of work.