TRUE FACTS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 17, 20 January 1940, Page 10

TRUE FACTS.

BRITISH WORKLESS. Exhaustive Returns Cause Misunderstanding. CHANGED SYSTEM ADVOCATED British Official Wireless. (Received 1.30 p.m.) RUGBY, January 10. Inadequate study of Britain's published unemployment returns, which are much more exhaustive than those of any other leading Power, Jiave aroused comment in some countries which is less favourable than the true facts warrant. The "Daily Telegraph" points out that the total of 1,300,000 unemployed includes, for example, a number probably not far short of 230,000. who are to a greater extent or lesser degree unemployable through ill-health or other reasons, who ought not properly to be regarded as being in the labour market at all. They include a further number estimated by the Prime Minister, in his Mansion House speech, at 500,000 who form a pool of labour moving at any one time from one job or industry to another. TJioy include about 50.000, notably dockers, whose work is from the nature of the case casual. Again, they include nearly 150,000 whose work has been temporarily laid oiT, namely, assured work in six weeks or less. Another group of 100,000 publicspirited wartime volunteers are not ordinarily engaged in work in peace j time. Boys and girls leaving school who may only wait a few weeks before starting work are also included. Many persons in these six categories would not be listed unemployed in other countries, and the "Daily Telegraph" advocates the desirability of a revised system of compiling unemployed figures, with a view to reflecting the genuine incidence, and render readily intelligible to the ordinary observer at home and abroad the distinction between temporary passage from job to job, and semi-permanent lack of any job at all.