Book excerpt: Persistent high employment and growing labour market inequality have become entrenched features of many European countries. This edited collection of papers focuses on the regional and local dimensions of these problems across the European union as a whole and, more particularly, in the UK. In the addressing the contemporary landscape of unemployment, social exclusion and public policy the contributors highlight several key themes, including: How the process of unemployment and social exclusion have an important local level operation. The increasing gender dimension and counts of unemployment to provide effective guides to the true scale of joblessness The need for more local-focused policy interventions to help reduce the problems of unemployment, employment insecurity and low incomes that now characterise many of the advanced countries.