they also show a fall in real wages for unskilled labour the group with the highest rates of unemployment at the level of the economy as a whole therefore for the period since the mid s there is little sign that employers overall were pushed up their labour demand schedules the evidence suggests that since the early s outward shifts in the labour supply schedule andor inward shifts in the labour demand schedule combined with some features of wage determination that prevented marketclearing left overall real wages little changed but unemployment much higher