GLOOMY READING ON AUTOMATION

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30471, 19 June 1964, Page 11

GLOOMY READING ON AUTOMATION

[Specially written for the N.Z.P.A. by FRANK OLIVERI

WASHINGTON.

The Department of Labour here has been engaged for some time on a task not yet completed which concerns the bogy of the 1960 s—automation and what it will do to the country’s labour force. The department is trying to chart the future of the labour market and to point put, for the benefit of Government as well as labour, the key industries where the number of jobs will increase and where they will be wiped out by new technologies, as automation is described.

The increase of automation has produced in recent years a lot of speculation based on a modest amount of facts and figures. The department is trying to provide a maximum of facts as a guide for the future and in the process has been considering 39 industries which between them employ half the industrial work force. The results, when placed alongside the forecasts of labour supply in a recent manpower report to the White House, help economists and others to forecast major trends that will alter the shape of the labour market by the end of this decade. Ample evidence is produced to indicate that by 1970 the country’s labour force will stand at 85 million, which is pretty close to 10 million more than at the end of 1963. Formidable Increase

This increase of about a million and a quarter workers each year for the rest of the decade seems formidable when compared with recent increases of three quarters of a million a year. This is because the country is only now beginning to overcome the effects of the depression years of just over 30 years ago. During those years the birth rate fell considerably and this resulted in recent years in a shortage of work-

ers in the 3545 age group, a shortage which will now be felt in lesser degree as each year passes. For a year or two yet the only big increases in the labour force will be in the groups containing the young or the old. The shortage in the 3545 year group is important for the younger workers have not yet reached the peak of their skill and the older workers are getting past their best. The economy has been rising now for 40 uninterrupted months but although the unemployment rate has dropped slightly it still hangs round five per cent. One thing, which for many economists stands out sharply, is that with a rapid increase in the total work force and automation increasing steadily it is not going to be easy to achieve the goal of full employment and stay at that desirable point. Labour And Output

One generalisation which stands out sharply and starkly is that automation in all its many facets will reduce the amount of labour needed to produce each unit of output. Various forms of automation reduce the amount of human labour needed by substituting machine time for manpower. It is becoming “standard” in many industries and businesses to use computers instead of clerks for routine book-keeping. The report says conveyors and other devices for handling materials replace men everywhere in the distribution of goods in quantity and in manufacturing more men every day are giving way to electronic devices. Very simple things are doing men out of work. For instance, in the dairy industry a simple shift to larger containers has reduced delivery jobs, while in the boot and shoe industry the use of new synthetic leathers enables many layers to be cut at one time and also makes automated shoe making machinery possible. But the whole picture is not dark. In a number of

industries the demand for increased labour will continue to rise, according to current predictions. Employment is expected to shrink in bakeries, the coal industry, crude oil and natural gas, the dairy industry, the shoe industry, in foundries, the lumber industry, in meat packing, in railways, in petroleum refining, telephone communication, textile mills, the tobacco industry and in water transportation.

Department of Labour studies indicate that by 1970 employment will be higher in air transportation, the aluminium industry, in banking, the cement, concrete, and construction industries, in electronics manufacturing, gas utility and pipe-line construction, in insurance and printing and publishing, the production of synthetic materials, in retail and wholesale trade and in the trucking industry. There are expected to be great increases in demand for products of the car industry, the steel industry, production of pulp and paper and in the electric power industry, but in all these labour-saving devices and technological advances are expected to cut down on manpower per production unit and hold the labour force in these industries roughly where it is now. Service Industries Departmental studies have not yet covered service industries such as hospitals, hotels, laundries and State and local government, all of which are expected to absorb more labour between now and 1970. A good deal of the report makes fairly gloomy reading because statistics show that in many industries where productivity has been gaining each year the demand for labour has been decreasing. The size of the automation problem is clearly indicated in one part of the report which says that to provide work for the rapidly-expand-ing labour force, for persons displaced by automation and to get the unemployment rate down to 4 per cent will need 3.75 million new jobs every year from now ur.til 1970.

President Sukarno of Indonesia, the Prime Minister of Malaysia (Tunku Abdul Rahman), and the Philippines President (Mr Macapagal), when they meet at the summit. MEET AGAIN The Ministers would meet again as soon as they received word that verification of withdrawal had actually begun, the communique added. Mr Lopez said that if this