Opinion polls are now beginning to show a reluctant consensus that, whoever is to blame and whatever happens from now on, high unemployment is probably here to stay. This means we shall have to find ways of sharing the available employment more widely.
But we need to go further. We must ask some fundamental questions about the future of work. Should we continue to treat employment as the norm？ Should we not rather encourage many other ways for self-respecting people to work？ Should we not Create conditions in which many of us can work for ourselves, rather than for an employer？ Should we not aim to revive the household and neighborhood, as well as the factory and the office, as centres of production and work？
The industrial age has been the only period of human history in which most people's work has taken the form. of jobs. The industrial age may now be coming to an end, and some of the changes in work patterns which it brought may have to be reversed. This seems a daunting thought. But, in fact, it could offer the prospect of a better future for work. Universal employment, as its history shows, has not meant economic freedom.
Employment became widespread when the enclosures of the 17th and 18th' centuries made many people dependent on paid work by depriving them of the use of the land, and thus of the means to provide a living for themselves. Then the factory system destroyed the cottage industries and removed work from people's homes. Later, as transport improved, first by rail then
by road, people commuted longer distances to their places of employment until, eventually, many people's work lost all connection with their home lives and the places in which they lived.
Meanwhile, employment put women at a disadvantage as men and women had shared the productive work of the household and village community in pre-industrial times, while now it becomes customary for the husband to go out to paid employment, leaving the unpaid work of the home and family to his wife. Also as employment became the dominant form. of work, young people and old people were excluded—a problem now, as more teenagers become frustrated at school and more retired people want to live active lives.
All this may now have to change. The time has certainly come to switch some effort and re- sources away from the Utopian goal of creating jobs for all, to the urgent practical task of helping many people to manage without full-time jobs.
Research carried out in recent opinion polls shows that ______.

A. the present high unemployment figures are a fact of life
B. new jobs must be created in order to rectify high unemployment figures
C. available employment must be most widely distributed among the unemployment
D. available employment should be restricted to a small percentage of the population