Unemployment in the United States

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 1828236179

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-226169

Document type:: Monograph

Title:: Unemployment in the United States

Place of publication:: Washington

Publisher:: United States, Government Printing Office

Year of publication:: 1930

Scope:: II, 193 Seiten

Digitisation:: 2022

Collection:: Economics Books

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on, 10- nia~ er- the red the pt {ay An ek. Ww a es, > is n't or ion me ey RI ust od am, nen ons ot? red her + of rst. he wk. ere ey ad? ny- wd ned. ing ha ing e'll oub 111. the aT” rer Sey ave UNEMPLOYMENT IN THE UNITED STATES 185 WHEN ANY GUESS IS GOOD These are questions I can but ask. I am passing sure, however, though our main difficulty in ascertaining the number unemployed in a given area comes from a failure wholly to define the meaning of the word. another hurdle more formidable bars the way. A last-winter’s mail brought me a task to perform. High public officials had agreed that a deal of unemployment existed in the country at large. But how much? That, they felt, must be determined. Specific instructions stated just how the essential data could be reaped in my own community. And—quite important—a fairly adequate definition of unemployment accompanied them. That was that. How to corral the figures was the next problem. Fortunately the letter of instruction told how. Six sources of information were to be visited and the best possible independent estimate secured in each case. The informa- tion gained from one source was not to be disclosed to another. So to each said source the question was put: “How manv persons usually employed are now out of work and looking for employment?” No. 1, the local commander of a nation-wide organization devoted to salvaging the down-and-out, smiled engagingly: “About 40,000, I should say, in the city proper. The secretary of the city’s charities organization, No. 2, shook his head: “I haven’t the faintest idea. Have vou?” “In the neighborhood of 60.000.” asserted an official of the city’s largest employment group. A private employment agency asked to be excused. “If we gave vou any figures they’d merely be shots in the air,” they said. Four that made. The fifth was a labor-union official. “How many unemployed? 130,000 at the very least.” he said—and breathed easier. * The sixth and last was a high police official. The question seemed to tickle him. “How many looking for jobs?” he said. “Too many. That's the best T ean do for you.” So much for the six most authoritative sources. A seventh estimate—my own which was requested, was 35,000. Four estimates from seven sources; the highest figure nearly four times the lowest. Whose was closest to the correct figure? No one will ever know. All were shots in the air, because even with a cameo- clear definition at hand, no agency existed then or now with sufficient funds, time or staff to do the task in the one manner that sould possibly evolve the riddle’s answer—hy a city-wide, simultaneous, house-to-house canvass; an enter- prise as exacting and costly as the taking of the census. That it can be done or some day will be is heside the question. It has not been done for the reason that substantially no eity has a clearing house at which all its job seekers register. New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, St. Louis, and cities a tenth their size have their employment offices, private and public, but only in rare instances does more than a very thin percentage of their jobless population patronize anv one agency exclusively. } And but a small minority of those who get jobs get them through either the fee-charging of the public agencies. The, overwhelming majority land them through the medium of help-wanted columns of the newspapers, corner-store gossip, friends, and by approach to the employer or his personnel department. The trend of the past ten years, nevertheless, is unmistakably toward a more constant patronage of employment agencies of private and public sponsorship. In the United States both are increasing in numbers; in Canada, where the private agency’s growth is restricted, only the public offices are increasing. It is natural that they should in an era like the present, when the supply of man power exceeds the demand. For it is in such periods that the need for a specialized brokerage service is most keenly felt. When jobs are scarce the jobless seek anv aid that may unearth jobs. And while employment agencies multiply, so, too, with a portent significant, I believe, of a definite and come-to-stay policy, are increasing our commercial and industrial trade associations; an arc of whose functions in many instances is to recruit more substantial man power for their members. An official of such an organization, if he’s fit, knows better than the broker what the plants back of him nzed and how best to select the men and women to fill these needs. Therefore, when the coming years crystallize this trend, the searcher for iitnem- ployment as well as employment statistics will have a source more accessible, accurate and authoritative than any now existing. The same gradual transition will in all likelihood also bring emplovment agencies to broader nsefulness and

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