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building trades occupations-even though some are admirably suited to fill those jobs.

Representative CORMAN. There is substantial evidence before our Commission, also before our Judiciary Committee when we were drafting what became the 1964 Civil Rights Act that this is an area which badly needed correction and the reason which led to the creation of the FEPC in the omnibus bill. My only comment about labor is that I was pleased to have testify before our committee in 1963 several of the most prominent labor leaders in the country urging that kind of discrimination be made against the law. I was terribly distressed to see that the National Association of Real Estate Boards did not take a similar position when were were grappling with the problem of open housing.

Representative CURTIS. I think that is a proper observation. One final point, then.

In the colloquy between you and Congressman Rumsfeld on racism, what worries and I thought your example of the Methodist Church was good, though it could be any church-Baptist Church or whatever. A problem is that so much of this racism charge is interpreted to apply to all our institutions. I think we have to recognize, at least I hope that most of our institutions in our society are human institutions, not "white" institutions. The Ten Commandments weren't developed by white people. You can call the Ten Commandments the law of "whitey," but they aren't. They were developed by contributions from all colors and varieties of races. And I hope that the institutions the bulk of those that we are developing in our society aren't white, but human. This is so important because I think there is the tendency for any Negro who does move up to be called an Uncle Tom, because he is working with these human institutions. And there is also the tendency to talk about the mores of our society as being the mores of white culture. I hope this is not so, and I don't believe that it is so. So I think this becomes important in furthering this dialog. Representative BOLLING. Thank you, Mr. Corman.

Before we close the hearings, I know more than most how important a role the various members, the four members of Congress played in the work of this Commission, Senators Harris and Brooke, Congressman McCulloch and yourself, but I suspect I know uniquely how much a part you played, and I think it is appropriate to put this in the record, because it is relatively little known nationally, and I think it should be known better that you played a critical and important role, not only in the work of the Commission, but also in its final conclusions. I am aware, as are relatively few, that the conclusions could have been rather different without your efforts.

And I think it is important that this hearing to which we invited all of these gentlemen who made so large a contribution should conclude on that note. You also have demonstrated today a quality that I have known for a long time you had, and that is physical endurance and patience.

With that, we will adjourn the committee until tomorrow at 10 a.m. in this room when the hearings will continue.

(Thereupon, at 12:40 p.m., the committee adjourned, to reconvene tomorrow, May 29, 1968, at 10a.m.)

EMPLOYMENT AND MANPOWER PROBLEMS IN THE CITIES: IMPLICATIONS OF THE REPORT OF THE NATIONAL ADVISORY COMMISSION ON CIVIL DISORDERS

WEDNESDAY, MAY 29, 1968

CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES, JOINT ECONOMIC COMMITTEE, Washington, D.C. The Joint Economic Committee met, pursuant to recess, at 10 a.m., in room S-407, the Capitol, Hon. Richard Bolling, member of the committee, presiding in place of committee Chairman Proxmire. Present: Representatives Bolling, Reuss, and Rumsfeld; and Senator Proxmire.

Also present: John R. Stark, executive director; James W. Knowles, director of research; and Douglas C. Frechtling, minority staff. Representative BOLLING (presiding). The committee will please come to order.

This morning the committee continues its hearings on the employment and manpower aspects of the report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders.

The subject of today's panel is on the nature of unemployment and subemployment in urban areas: how many people are unemployed, underemployed-or not looking for work, because they believe none is available? How extensive are the deficiencies of education, training, and motivation? What are the economic forces operating on the supply and demand for labor in urban areas, and particularly in the ghettos?

I would like to welcome the panel members for today. They bring to this hearing impressive expertise on diverse but related aspects of employment problems of the ghetto. Gentlemen, we appreciate your appearance before this committee.

The panelists are Prof. R. Thayne Robson, of the Department of Economics, the University of Utah; Dr. Vivian W. Henderson, who is president of Clark College, and an economist as well as an educator; Dr. Elliot Liebow, of the National Institute of Mental Health, whose expertise is in the area of anthropology. I might add that Dr. Liebow recently published a book entitled "Tally's Corner: a Study of Negro Street-Corner Men," and Prof. John F. Kain, of the Department of Economics, Harvard University, and the MIT-Harvard Joint Center for Urban Studies.

I suggest, gentlemen, that you proceed with your opening statements for the record if you desire. I will first recognize Professor Robson.

STATEMENT OF R. THAYNE ROBSON, DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS, UNIVERSITY OF UTAH

Mr. ROBSON. Mr. Chairman, Representative Bolling, and Senator Proxmire, it is a pleasure to meet with this committee this morning to talk about this exceedingly important problem. I think that we begin with the proposition that the Kerner Commission report did dramatically and accurately describe the nature of the unemployment and the subemployment problems in the urban areas of this country. The report is clear on two fundamental points, I think. One is that we have a very serious unemployment and subemployment problem in this country and, secondly, that our present efforts to deal with that problem are, while they are praiseworthy in every respect, are not adequate to deal effectively with the problem, to provide jobs with dignity and a fair income to all of our American citizens who want to work.

Now, it is my understanding that in this session this morning we are particularly interested in the scope of the problem, the structure, the trends, the characteristics of the people, and that the committee is interested in some suggestion about the waste or the cost to our society, the product foregone in economic materials because of our failure to utilize our human resources effectively.

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I should like just in introduction to make about five basic points in my opening remarks and then I will take advantage of tion to file a longer statement with the committee.

First, I think it is important to recognize for this committee that the data we have available, which relates strictly to the urban areas and more specifically to the slum areas within our large metropolitan areas are extremely limited. The data available come from a few surveys conducted in a few cities in 1966, and from the studies of the persons who participated in the riots of 1967.

The second point I would like to suggest is that over the years, we have, in fact, used as our indicator of the magnitude of the problem, the data from national surveys with respect to the employment problems of the nonwhite population in this country. These data have been substantially improved in the last year or so since we began to talk about subemployment problems as well as unemployment problemsbecause the subemployment problems in aggregate terms are more important in terms of the maintenance of poverty in this country than is the unemployment problem, even though the unemployment problem should warrant the first priority by virtue of its severity in terms of its impact on the individuals involved.

Now, we ought to be concerned about the kind of information that is available to us with respect to this problem because anyone who reviews the studies and Commission reports, the various bills pending before the Congress, is impressed with the fact that a great many interesting things are said about the total jobs needed in his country, and the numbers of people unemployed and subemployed. There is no doubt that we need to refine our data and know more about what it is we are talking about. I am much encouraged by the pledge that I find in the manpower report of this year that says that the Department of Labor is going to undertake in this year a series of continuing

surveys and studies of the unemployment and subemployment problems in the ghetto.

I would hope that this committee would do what it can to encourage the Labor Department to proceed with that work. It is my understanding they are entering into an agreement with the Bureau of the Census to do that.

As an economist interested in this particular problem, I think we ought to acknowledge that our data with respect to this problem are not what they ought to be, and we could spend a lot of time on that.

I don't think that is the most important problem, however. I think that the data we do have available relating to the unemployment and the subemployment of the nonwhite population in this country is sufficient to demonstrate that we do have a very serious problem, that the reason for collecting the data is to use them as guidelines for public policy, and that we do, in fact, now, have a shortfall in this country in the neighborhood of some 3 to 4 million jobs that need to be created in order to put the unemployed to work and to upgrade those subemployed people.

We get varying estimates about the number of unemployed ranging from a low of about 300,000 in our urban slums to as high as 2 and 3 million. We do know that there are at least 10 to 11 million people employed in this country who earn less than a poverty income on those jobs, and that about 6.5 million of those people are employed on a fulltime basis, and that this ought to be a sufficient guide to the kind of action that this country needs to take.

Now I will not rehearse for the committee the data that are available with respect to the unemployment problems of the nonwhite people in this country. The fact that for our teenagers we have got an unemployment rate of 26.5 percent last year, more than 21⁄2 times the rate for whites; and that the nonwhite rate is always double the white rate. These facts have been rehearsed for this committee and for every commission for the last several years.

What I would like simply to suggest in concluding these brief remarks is that we ought to be concerned about what we are losing in this country from failure to address ourselves to this problem, not only in terms of civil disorder, not only in terms of individual suffering and alienation, but from lost output. Consider the simple fact that we, in the first quarter of this year, produced a gross national product of about $826 billion and we had 75 million employed-and these kinds of rough estimates are, indeed, rough-that amounts to a value for each job of roughly $11,000 per job.

Now, if in fact we put the 2 million people to work that the Kerner Commission said we ought to put to work in the next 3 years, if we did create the 4 million jobs that ought to be created to upgrade the subemployed people, you can sit down and start to figure out what the value of those jobs would be to the American economy.

I don't know very many economists now who are prepared to really suggest to the committee the kind of a productivity function that ought to be associated with those jobs. But I would say, as a minimum, it ought to be half of the average value of the jobs in this country. Thus, f you are talking about 4 million jobs, each of which in gross product terms ought to be worth $5,000 as a minimum, and could be worth any

if

where up to the average of $10,000 to $11,000, we are, in fact, losing in gross product terms somewhere between $10 and $30 billion a year by not putting the unemployed people to work and by not providing decent jobs where the subemployed people can work somewhere consistent with their skills and abilities. I think very often that in this country the reason we have so many subemployed people-and our surveys in 1966 show that the subemployment rates in the ghettos are 212 times the unemployment rate is because we have such a tremendous supply of people who are willing to take those low-levelentry jobs. I would suggest that there are a number of things that this and other committees of the Congress ought to look at. But as long as we have this disguised unemployment in the subemployed people of this country, we will not really be able to address ourselves to that problem.

The data are relatively clear that in the expansionary period from 1961 to 1967, the subemployed people have not benefited in wage increases and in income increases commensurate with the growth in the American economy. Perhaps what we really need is an income policy as well as a manpower policy with a good universal minimum wage at about $2 an hour so that we could really identify the problem by converting some of the subemployment to unemployment. If that were done, we could address the problem more effectively as a job creation problem, because this problem of upgrading 62 million people who are employed at poverty wages, is the kind of a problem that I suspect we are not yet addressing very successfully in our economic policy and in our manpower policy.

You will recall the Kerner Commission estimates that if these people were employed, the males were employed, with the same occupational distribution and the same income distribution, at the same wage levels as the white male population that the incomes of these people would rise by $4.8 billion. That figure was compared in terms of what the income to the recipients would be if you used the white unemployment rate, which indicated a difference of $1.5 billion. So the minimum you come out with in terms of present cost is something in the neighborhood of $6.3 billion just in lost income because we failed to utilize those human resources of the nonwhite population in this country in the same way in which we utilize the white population.

Now, an economist always feels uncomfortable in talking about this unemployment problem and subemployment problem in economic terms, because it never reveals the kind of human suffering and the kind of loss of dignity and the kind of loss of respect that individuals can have for themselves in this country, and it means so much more than whatever economic value in income terms or gross product terms than we could suggest to this committee.

I know, Mr. Chairman, that you and the members of the committee appreciate that more than, maybe, even some of the members of the panel.

Well, I don't really think it is necessary to belabor this committee with what the data are. We need to improve them. We need to know more about the problems in the ghettos, but the data are already sufficient to suggest that we need expanded effort to create jobs in the public and private sector.

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