Year of Harvest:

The 1966 Manpower Report

EDITOR'S NOTE.-The President's report to the Congress on manpower requirements, resources, utilization, and training was transmitted March 8, 1966. Unlike reports in previous years, this one called attention especially to "manpower prospects and problems which are emerging as the products of substantial economic progress." The following excerpt comprises sections from the chapter reviewing current developments. Tabular material and charts have been omitted.

NINETEEN SIXTY-FIVE was a year of outstanding performance by the United States economy. The Nation's production of goods and services as measured by the real gross national product increased by 52 percent-a rate nearly half again greater than the average of the past two decades. Total employment rose by a near record 1.8 million over the year, outstripping the 1.4 million growth in the labor force. The expansion of the economy, largely attributable to the timely application of general economic policies, and the specific impact of manpower and antipoverty programs, contributed to reducing unemployment to 42 percent for 1965 as a whole, the lowest annual rate since 1957.

Significantly, brisk growth in employment and output, and improvement in unemployment, continued throughout 1965 and into 1966, marking the beginning of a record breaking 6th consecutive year of growth from the recession low point of 1961. By January 1966 the unemployment rate had been reduced to 4.0 percent-about equal to the lowest level since World War II, with the exception of the Korean war period-and, moreover, the economy clearly was still expanding rapidly.

Fully as important as the size of the employment increase in 1965 was its industrial and occupational pattern. In the private sector of the economy generally, and in the goods-producing and related industries particularly, the expansion of employment was outstanding. Manufacturing

jobs exceeded World War II levels for the first time, with all hard goods industries and most soft goods industries registering employment advances. These job gains brought a substantial improvement in the employment situation of a number of disadvantaged groups, including Negroes and less skilled workers generally. The gains were also spread widely throughout the United States.

The sharpest acceleration in job growth in 1965 occurred among blue-collar workers especially at the least skilled level-and among teenagers and nonwhites, all groups which have faced serious employment difficulties for at least a decade. Particularly impressive was the absorption into employment of a record 850,000 young adult workers 18 to 24 years of age, more than double their average annual increase in the previous 4 years.

All of the additional employment in 1965 represented full-time jobs, the source too of most of the 1964 pickup. The number of nonfarm workers on part time for economic reasons continued to decline and reached the lowest level on record since annual information became available in 1956.

The strong demand for additional manpower was also reflected in the substantial lengthening of the factory workweek, which rose four-tenths of an hour, or nearly 1 percent, in 1965 to 41.1 hours the highest level since the end of the Second World War. Overtime hours among factory production workers also reached the highest level in the 10 years that these data have been collected, averaging 3.9 hours in durable goods industries and 3.1 in nondurable goods industries in 1965.

Very sizable inroads were made into long-term unemployment, which had been relatively intractable during earlier, but shorter, upturns in the business cycle. The number of workers unemployed 15 weeks or longer dropped by 200,000 in 1965, nearly twice the previous year's reduction. Much of the improvement was among persons who had been out of work 6 months or longer-their number fell by 130,000. The improvement was particularly marked among two of the groups especially vulnerable to long-term unemployment-the unskilled and older men.

(Continued on page 300.)

The Labor Month in Review

-W. B. REDDAWAY

The report of the National Commission on Technology, Automation, and Economic Progress, whose recommendations are reported in this issue on page 274, begins by characterizing our age as one of "conscious social change." A worker's view of society and the relative importance to him of his job play an important part in the way he adapts to these changes. Yet the experiences of the redundant worker and his views of what is happening to him, for example, have been only meagerly told. Two recent studies contribute to our knowledge of the attitudes of the worker laid off because of the introduction of more efficient production methods or because the products of his firm have lost out in competition with others.

British Railway Workers. While comparisons from studies from across the Atlantic should be made with caution because of the difference in backgrounds, a recent study by Dorothy Wedderburn, Redundancy and the Railwaymen, says a number of things that are relevant to workers anywhere.

Induced by the need for "impartial and objective study of the facts of what does happen, about which so little is known that the actions of all parties—government, employers, and unions— tend to be based on nothing better than traditional dogmas," the Wedderburn study had two major objectives, which also concern these parties in the United States.

The problem now is whether or not we can begin to be more specific about the effect of "upbringing," if we translate this to mean the ways in which total social experience differs for different groups of workers, and shapes their perception of job possibilities and their aspirations. It is now widely recognized that lack of information is frequently a barrier to geo

graphical or occupational mobility. But is it simply a question of improving the functioning of, say, the Ministry of Labour so that more "information" is disseminated? Or must account be taken of the influence of long-established patterns of interaction with other groups of workers, or with families and friends. . . In this country, we have not yet studied in depth the role of economic incentives in shifting labor. . . . perhaps incentives operate differently in homogeneous and stable, as compared with shifting and heterogeneous, communities?

The second major interest behind the present inquiry was in the field of policy. . . . On the one hand, the view is expressed that if a faster rate of economic growth is to be achieved, movements of workpeople "from declining industries to expanding industries and from less productive firms to more productive firms" will be required and "measures will have to be taken to facilitate mobility of labor and to avoid the hardship of redundancy." On the other hand, the view is also taken that measures to avoid hardship are required in an increasingly prosperous society, irrespective of their implication for economic growth.

As plans were announced to close a number of railway workshops in England, the investigators decided to study two of the first to go-beginning in the summer of 1963. Mrs. Wedderburn and her colleagues were especially curious to discover how quickly the men found jobs, what sorts of jobs they were, and whether they had to move from their district to find work. Against the background of a nationwide economic expansion, the study group investigated how the men adjusted socially, psychologically, and economically to the change.

The kind of design that underlies the study is demonstrated by the adoption of the concept "being without work" rather than the usual "unemployed." This is far from a semantic quibble. Ten months after the workshop closures, 20 per

cent of the men were "without work"; 13 percent were registered at the unemployment office, but only 5 percent were considered "unemployed." A fifth of the men without jobs were already drawing a retirement pension; 17 percent without jobs were drawing sickness benefits; of the 42 drawing unemployment benefits, about 16 were disabled or in very poor health. The definition "without work" thus permitted a much more accurate analysis of the actual status of the workers and their need for income, employment, and health and welfare services.

The authors point to other strengths:

...

Some people might object that by including in our study the sick, and the men so close to retirement that within 15 months they were drawing a pension, we have presented a distorted picture. . . . But certain assumptions are involved here, and they do not justify omitting the retired from the picture altogether. Indeed we would argue that one important aspect of redundancy may well be the way in which it precipitates early retirement.

What are the characteristics associated with getting a job quickly or being unemployed for a long time? Degree of skill appeared to make little difference; more important than anything else was age (as has been found in some of the U.S. data). However, there was a high correlation between age, length of service, and continuation pay (severance payments based on length of service, rates of pay, and age).

The question of a correlation between the length of continuation pay and delay in beginning to look for a job is a matter of obvious relevance in the setting of severance and unemployment pay levels:

In most cases, the new job was taken well before the point at which continuation pay ran out. The exceptions were the men with relatively short entitlement. . . .

Change, by Alain Touraine. Difficult for one lacking the key to the sociological jargon filtered through the English translation, the book is an immense job of cataloging and abstracting research.

The material is organized around four basic types of response to any change:

Withdrawal. Certain workers will be almost unaffected by many changes. They are most likely to respond with indifference and withdrawal.

Utilitarianism. Some will be predominantly concerned with the effect of change upon the rewards they receive for their personal contribution.

Solidarity. Some will assess the change primarily in terms of its effect upon the rewards and status of their working group.

Labor Action. Finally, some will respond primarily in terms of the "political" effect of the change— its implications for workers' control over their working conditions.

The research reviewed is then classified according to its relevance to the occupational system, the organizational system, and the decisionmaking system.

Among Touraine's conclusions is that trade union action tends to be more and more oriented to general economic problems. "How is it possible, for example, in view of the massive consequences of automation, to defend the worker's position if not by acting at the level of economic policy itself and no longer at the level of occupational consequences?" On the other hand he argues that:

in the United States, where the most general problems are the least institutionalized and where the trade unions are therefore little concerned with doctrine and ideology, the workers react with the desire to organize themselves round ideas borrowed from the field of satisfaction, i.e., from individual life. All this is finally reflected in the weakness of collective reactions to problems of central importance, such as underemployment. . . They are sufficient to create "social problems" but too weak to create "social movements."

Because of its summary nature, the Touraine book would perhaps be most useful to those in the other social sciences who need a handy access to the sociological viewpoint. The Wedderburn study should be valuable to business and union leaders, as well as academic and government personnel who are concerned with the problems of the redundant worker.