Unwilling Idlers looks at the unemployed and their families in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in six Canadian cities: Victoria, Vancouver, Winnipeg, Hamilton, Montreal, and Halifax. The authors provide a social profile of the men and women who identified themselves as unemployed, relate the phenomenon of unemployment to family characteristics and life cycles, and explore the importance of geographical location and seasonal occupation as defining characteristics of the unemployed.

The authors assess the impact of unemployment on living standards and show how workers and their families tried to cope with the problem.