ployment and more than one-third of these were jobless for 15 weeks or longer. Within this concentration of unemployment is a pattern of denial of opportunity to youth and minority groups, frustration for the displaced older worker and permanent poverty for the uneducated and unskilled. The employment problems of each of these disadvantaged is treated in detail later in the report. 3. POVERTY AND THE MANPOWER REVOLUTION The curse of poverty which shows respect for neither age nor race also has its roots in the manpower problem. The 20 percent of American families with annual incomes under $3,000 are of increasing concern not only because the general level of affluence has left them relatively more depressed, but because poverty in America has been changing in nature. The American frontiersman knew poverty as he struggled to build a society sufficiently productive to offer a more abundant life. The immigrant knew poverty as he entered a new land and prepared his children to move upward in the economic and social scale. In both cases, poverty was a transition stage to better things. Poverty in modern America tends to be a permanent state, concentrated among certain disadvantaged groups and in many cases continuing generation after generation. Those in poverty are not suffering from unemployment alone. According to the 1964 Economic Report of the President, the head of the household is unemployed but actively looking for work in only 6 percent of poor families. Forty-four percent of poor families have no employable family head. But the head of 49 percent of the families with annual incomes under $3,000 does have a job. Full-time employment at less than $1.50 an hour is not sufficient to produce the annual income necessary to keep a family from extreme poverty. This, too, is a manpower problem and a consequence of the manpower revolution. Its roots are lack of productivity, lack of skill, or lack of opportunity. The degree to which individual poverty can be attributed to lack of motivation, a low level of intelligence, alcoholism, or other mental or psychological problems is debatable. But these factors too often have economic roots. Typically, the rural family, technologically displaced, ekes out a marginal living in rural poverty or emigrates to an urban slum. Lack of skills and the absence of the unskilled jobs which might provide a higher standard of living impose an impenetrable barrier to economic improvement. The parents' own lack of education, their frustration, and the deficiencies of the environment then insure that the cycle of dependency will trap all save the brightest and most ambitious of the next generation. None of these consequences of the manpower revolution are inevitable but their future prevention requires forethought and the removal of their present existence requires massive national effort. 4. CONSEQUENCES FOR LABOR-MANAGEMENT RELATIONS Job security has become the major issue in labor-management relations. "Featherbedding" has become a common label attached to those whose skills have become surplus or obsolete but remain on the job. Technological change disrupts many familiar relationships for each worker affected. The certainty of familiar employment relationships, accumulated rights of seniority, vacations, and various fringe benefits-all are threatened by technological dislocation, even if alternative employment opportunities exist. When alternative employment is scarce, resistance to technological change is to be expected. Those affected by technological change might be divided into three groups: Those whose jobs have been destroyed by technological change in the establishment of their own employer, those whose jobs have disappeared as a result of technological change in a competing industry which puts the employer out of business or forces him to change his product, and those potential employees who would have been employed had the technological change not occurred. Labor-management relations are involved primarily in only the first. When the benefits of technological change accrue to the employing establishment, recent experience has demonstrated the ability of the parties to work out schemes for protecting the affected workers by sharing the gains. But employees affected by technological advances made by competing employers and those who remain unhired because of technological displacement are just as affected and just as entitled to consideration. The gains and the responsibility for assistance in the latter cases belong to society, however, rather than the employer. A true right-to-work concept which assured employment opportunity to all without loss of accrued rights and benefits is the best preventative of resistance to necessary technological and economic change. 5. RACE RELATIONS Every aspect of the manpower revolution has struck the minority group worker with multiplied force. One-half of all Negro families are poor by the $3,000 annual income definition. They and other minority groups are concentrated in depressed rural areas and central city slums. Their educational backgrounds and opportunities are the most deficient. The jobs open to them due to tradition, discrimination, prejudice and preparation are among those most vulnerable to technological change. Even in the happy circumstances that discrimination could be eliminated, economic disadvantages would still dog minority footsteps. In cities outside the South, the goals of Negro demonstrations have been primarily for jobs and schools. These efforts for equal treatment deserve sympathy. Yet a final solution to the employment and income portions of racial problems must include expansion of job opportunities for the entire labor force and extraordinary efforts to furnish the education and skill-training opportunities necessary to compete effectively in the labor market. 6. SHORTAGES OF HIGH-TALENT MANPOWER An anomaly of the manpower revolution is the concurrence of unemployment and unfulfilled demands for labor. We have no satisfactory measure of job vacancies and only vague ideas of the meaning of labor shortages. But by no measure would the number of job vacancies approach the numbers of the unemployed. Witnesses before the subcommittee disagreed as to whether there is really a general shortage of technical and scientific manpower. They were agreed that shortages do exist in a number of specific job categories. The near full employment of colleage graduates and the fierce competition for qualified graduate students in the natural and physical sciences demonstrate the ability of the economy to absorb many more of the highly educated. In fact, there is reason to believe that the supply of manpower of this type to some degree creates both its own demand and demand for supporting skills. The fact that one-fourth of all those working as engineers do not hold a college degree is evidence that the supply has been short enough to foster considerable upgrading. The lists of shortage occupations circulated among the State employment services and want ads seeking skilled craftsmen, white-collar workers, and engineers in nearly every large city reinforce testimony that unemployment is, in part, a problem of the wrong skills in the wrong places. The rapid growth in the number of jobs requiring substantial preparation and the disappearance of unskilled ones also suggests that the shortage problem may get worse as the level of demand increases. IV. TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE EMPLOYMENT AND MANPOWER POLICY: APPRAISAL AND RECOMMENDATIONS Responsibility for employment and manpower decisions in the United States is widely dispersed. Employment relationships are predominantly private. Therefore, the primary manpower agencies are private employers, labor organizations, families, and individuals. The level of employment is determined in general by private consumption and investment decisions. The developemnt of manpower resources, in the main, is the responsibility of individuals, families, employers, local school districts, and private and State universities. But the Federal Government can and does play a significant complementary role. The Federal Government itself is the direct employer of 2.4 million persons (4.1 million including military personnel) and employs indirectly, through contractors and suppliers, 4 million more. Through the Employment Act of 1946, the Federal Government accepted the responsibility for maintaining employment, private and public, at high levels. The monetary and taxation policies of the National Government profoundly affect private economic activity and, thereby, employment. A wide range of Federal expenditure programs, direct and indirect, affect the economies and employment levels of all parts of the country. Federal funds and policies play an increasingly significant role in education and training. The federally financed public employment services are the most important supplement to the efforts of employers and individual workers to match job openings with available manpower. In a sense, Federal policies and programs act as a catalyst to private, State, and local efforts. Their effectiveness can make the difference between a slow-moving or even stagnant economy and a dynamic, progressive one. The ability of the Nation to adjust to and exploit the full potential of its growing labor force and dramatically improving technology will depend in large measure upon the effectiveness of these programs and policies. It is continually incumbent upon this subcommittee, therefore, to appraise existing employment and manpower programs and policies and recommend improvements as needs appear. For convenience, the appraisals and recommendations which follow are grouped into four broad categories: (1) Those dealing with the process of national employment and manpower policymaking. (2) Those which affect the maintenance of full employment. power resources. (4) Those concerned with improving the efficiency with which the labor market matches men and jobs. 37 |