BRITISH UNEMPLOYMENT.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 26, 31 January 1934, Page 6

BRITISH UNEMPLOYMENT.

The interpretation of the statistics of unemployment was the subject of an illuminating paper read by Mr. J. A. Dale, a high official of the Ministry' of Labour, before the Royal Statistical Society in December. "Many people seem to think of the .unemployed," said Mr. Dale, "as a special class of industrial workers who are surplus to the needs of industry and permanently out of work"; and one object of hie address was to refute this and other not inexcusable misconceptions. Figures given by Mr. Dale showed clearly that much the greater part of the unemployment experienced by insured workers is of an intermittent character. Nowadays, he said, nearly six million different persons claim unemployment benefit or transitional payment in the course of a year, but the number unemployed on any one day is not much more than one-third of that figure. Moreover, the number of the latter who had been continuously unemployed for the whole of'the preceding twelve month*, is less than half a million; and it was stated during the discussion that followed Mr. Dale's address I that the number who may be described as permanently unemployed and more or less unemployable, is well under 100,000. There is, nevertheless, a large number of workers whose days of unemployment in recent times, exceed their days of employment —the people who unfortunately fall into what Mr. Dale described as the "hard core" of unemployment. He produced figures which showed that 'there are about a million people who. although [they get occasional jobs, are unemployed for !nine out of twelve months, while another figure quoted showed that there are over '700.000 people, whose contribution record indicated that they had been in work for less |than thirty weeks in the last two years.