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In 1980, as Great Britain entered its severest recession since the Second World War and unemployment began to rise rapidly, the British Steel Corporation in Port Talbot, South Wales, made 5800 people - nearly half the workforce - redundant. The book offers a study of that event. The work focuses on the labour-market behaviour and outcomes of those made redundant, showing how the changes in the demand for labour which produced the redundancies affected the subsequent labour-market careers of the redundant workers themselves. It explores the social characteristics and domestic circumstances of the redundants and examines the relation between domestic circumstances and labour-market outcomes, showing how social networks link household and employment opportunities and define social identities which can constitute an important determinant of which workers get the small number of jobs available. In documenting the transformation of a local labour market in a period of major economic and social transition Professor Harris and his team of researchers have produced a major study of the human effects of the recession.