1964 Awake! - Theocratic Collector.com

around the world,
in America it is fast
becoming the nation's
No. 1 problem. The
perplexing paradox in
the United States is
that there appears to exist
a semblance of prosperity
while the country's unemployment
rate is at an alltime
high. The United
States Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated
that in January, 1964, some 67,228,000
people were employed; 4,565,000 were unemployed.
In other words, the figures above mean
that at present one out of every fifteen
workers in the United States cannot find
a job, despite efforts by the government
and private corporations to improve the
unemployment situation. And what is perhaps
even more ominous is the fact that
there is no sure prospect of immediate
improvement in sight.
The expansion of automation and its jobeliminating
factors, at a time when an increase
in population is demanding more
jobs, is being blamed for much of America's
unemployment difficulty. At the last
count, according to U.S. President Lyndon
Johnson's Council of Economic Advisers,
automation is eliminating jobs at
the rate of 2,000,000 a year, which is about
40,000 jobs a week! President Johnson
himself said that by 1970 the United States
will be able "to match the output of the
1960s with 22 million fewer workers."
(New York Times) January 3) This job
elimination is taking place at a time when
young people are swarming into the labor
MAY 22, 1964
market in greater
numbers than ever before
in the nation's
history.
This is especially
significant since the
unemployment rate is
highest among those
under twenty years of age,
the unskilled, the uneducated
and the nonwhite.
Recent detailed studies indicated
that there are approximately
338,000 available males between
the ages of 14 and 24 in the United
States who are just not participating in
the labor force for want of work.
Compared with Other Nations
In some other places the employment
picture is more optimistic. For example,
in Great Britain the rate of unemployment
is only 2.4 percent, 1.9 perccnt in France,
1.1 percent in Japan, 4.3 percent in Italy
and 1 percent in West Germany. These are
1960 adjusted figures, compiled when the
United States rate was 5.6 percent.
Great Britain, France and these other
nations are also confronted with problems
of automation, education. training and
physical limitations of the unemployed.
Still they seem to have the situation more
firmly in hand. In France, for example,
200,000 refugees from Algeria have been
absorbed into the labor force. In Great
Britain a drop in manufacturing jobs has
been more than made up by a rise in other
work. Western Europe has faced the population's
drift from the farm to the city.
It has also had a relative decline in manufacturing
jobs and a growth of white-
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