TABLE 10.-Unemployment rates for occupation groups with above average unemployment in 1962

Construction employment is subject to sharp seasonal fluctuations, especially in the Northern States where outdoor work is often interrupted in the winter months. It also varies sharply with the business cycle, and in recent years has tended to decline. Moreover, the industry has a pattern of short-term construction projects and relatively loose attachments of employees to particular employers. All these factors make for persistently high unemployment rates, even among skilled construction craftsmen.

Unemployment also tends to be high among hired workers in agriculture. The seasonality of the work, disruptions due to unusually bad weather or crop failures, and the uncertainties of migratory farmwork are the main factors in the high unemployment rates for those who still regard themselves as farmworkers. Furthermore, employment opportunities in agriculture have been declining for a long time, with the result that many former farmworkers have migrated to the cities and now add, to some extent, to the unemployment rates for other industries.

The rate of unemployment among mineworkers has been higher than the overall average rate in each of the last 14 years because of the marked decline in employment in this industry. And mineworkers who have been displaced are particularly subject to long-term unemployment, since most mining communities offer little in the way of alternative employment opportunities.

Within manufacturing there is considerable variation in the incidence of unemployment among industries and also from year to year, depending largely on the general state of business activity. A major branch of manufacturing with a high rate of unemployment is the automobile industry, which responds sharply to declines in general business conditions and has additional fluctuations of its own. In 1961 unemployment averaged 14 percent among automobile workers, going as high as 27 percent in some months. The industry has some seasonal unemployment; during August or September of each year automobile plants are invariably shut down for short periods for model changeovers. Furthermore, automobile employment has had a downward trend during the past decade as a result in part of technological changes. Even in 1962, a boom year for automobile production, the rate of unemployment of automobile workers stayed about as high as the unemployment rate for the labor force as a whole. Two of the

major automobile manufacturing centers-Detroit and Flint—have been on the list of high unemployment areas for a long time, partly be cause of the general employment decline in the industry though also because of a shift of automobile employment out of Michigan.

TABLE 11.-Unemployment rates for industries with above average unemployment in 1962

Another manufacturing industry group where unemployment has been high is primary metals. In 4 out of the last 6 years (including 1962) unemployment in primary metals has averaged 7 percent or higher, owing mainly to the steel industry's declining employment. Nondurable goods industries which have had relatively high unemployment in recent years include food processing, textiles, and apparel. Among workers connected with the service-producing industries, unemployment is generally less, but there are some notable exceptions to this rule. In 1962 and other recent years, those in the fields of entertainment and recreation and in personal service industries (hotels, laundries, beauty shops, etc.) had relatively high unemployment rates. Sizable increases in unemployment rates have also taken place in recent years among workers in the railroads, retail trade, and business and repair services.

In some other industries, unemployment has remained well below 4 percent despite recent increases. These include machinery, printing, and chemical industries within manufacturing; publc utilities other than transportaton; finance, insurance, real estate; and professional services and public administration.

THE LONG-TERM UNEMPLOYED

The preceding sections have referred to the prolonged unemployment common among certain groups. For these groups unemployment is not merely a temporary interlude between jobs but often a disaster of long duration. The following paragraphs review briefly the composition of the unemployment groups.

In 1962, 28 pecent of all the unemployed were out of work 15 weeks or longer, and a large proportion of this group remained jobless for at least half a year. This "hard core" group of unemployed has increased in recent years. In 1957 the number unemployed for 6 months or more averaged 240,000, or 8 percent of all jobless workers. In 1962 it averaged 600,000, or 15 percent of the total (table 12).

TABLE 12.-Age, sex, and color of persons unemployed 6 months or longer and of all persons in the civilian labor force, 1957 and 1962

A good many of these workers are in areas where there are no longer job opportunities in the types of work for which they are qualified. They continue unemployed because they lack mobility or the qualifications required for work in other occupations, industries, or areas.

Of the workers unemployed in 1962 for a period of 15 weeks or longer, those under 25 years of age made up 26 percent and those 25 to 44 years old, 35 percent; 39 percent were 45 or older.

The occupational and industrial distribution of the long-term unemployed, as compared with the labor force, are shown in tables 13 and 14.

TABLE 13.-Major occupation group of persons unemployed 6 months or longer and of all persons in the civilian labor force, 1957 and 1962

TABLE 14.—Industry group of persons unemployed 6 months or longer and of all persons in the civilian labor force, 1957 and 1962

COMPARISON OF UNEMPLOYMENT HERE AND ABROAD

Unemployment in recent years has been relatively greater in the United States than in most other industrial countries. Recent studies have concluded that wide differences in unemployment rates do exist and are not due merely to differences in unemployment measurements concepts and techniques. When unemployment rates in other countries are adjusted to conform to U.S. measurement methods, they are usually increased, but they are still consistently below the rates in the United States.

Comparative unemployment rates for this country and a number of others as of 1960 are shown in chart 14. It will be seen that the United States had the second highest unemployment rate of any of the countries compared.

Furthermore, Western European and Japanese unemployment rates have been below the U.S. rates not merely in a single year but in general throughout the full decade of the 1950's. At the beginning of the decade, rates in Western Germany were substantially higher than in this country, but by the latter part of the decade they were reduced below the U.S. levels. Germany achieved an especially marked improvement, reducing unemployment, which had been close to 10 percent at the beginning of the decade, to 1 percent by 1960 through rapid economic growth.

Differences in unemployment rates between countries are influenced by demographic, institutional, and structural factors as well as by economic ones. A pertinent question, to which only tentative answers are yet possible, is whether high U.S. rates of unemployment are accounted for, to a greater extent, by our advanced stage of economic development and different institutional structure or by the slower rate of economic growth in this country.

71960 is the most recent year for which comparable adjusted data are now available. It should be noted also that the annual U.S. rate of 5.6 percent for 1960 was very close to our 5.8 percent average for the 5-year period 1957-61.