Substantial Rise In Unemployed Likely

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31632, 19 March 1968, Page 1

Substantial Rise In Unemployed Likely

(New Zealand Press Association)

WELLINGTON, March 18.

As seasonal work was completed later in the autumn many seasonal workers would be unable to find jobs in industry and there would be a substantial increase in the numbers unemployed, the Minister of Labour (Mr Shand) said tonight.

Mr Shand said the Government would again run seasonal employment schemes but these were unlikely to provide work for all those who were seasonally unemployed.

In an address to the Wellington Chamber of Commerce, Mr Shand said' New Zealand must adopt a positive manpower policy designed to re-establish full employment in a manner consistent with the maintenance of an acceptable balance of trade, of internal price stability and of an adequate rate of economic growth. “We have achieved full employment in New Zealand. I suggest we have done so at least to some extent at the expense of these other desirable economic objectives,” he said. LEAST SKILLED . Mr Shand said that whenever chronic unemployment appeared the least skilled members of society would tend to be sorted out. The cure lay neither in creating work for unskilled people nor in attempting to train the least skilled to become skilled workers. The real cure lay in a general upgrading of the skills of a large number of people until room was made at the bottom. Mr Shand said that at present there were about 6500

people who had registered with the Department of Labour. Of these about a third had been unemployed for less than three weeks and on past experience most of this third would be found jobs within the next three weeks. Some of those who had been unemployed for longer terms had special and recognisable disabilities of one kind or another which made their placement in industry more difficult.

At present less than 200 of the 40,000 school leavers had registered and had not been found employment. UNABLE TO WORK The Minister said: “But, about one quarter of our unemployed tfre less than 21 years old. Many of them have had five or 10 jobs since leaving school. “They have failed until now to find themselves a place in society. The difficulty with most of them is not lack of employment opportunity, it is a lack of capacity to perform satisfactorily even a simple unskilled job. “They are a social problem rather than an employment problem.

“Politicians don’t like unemployment politicians in power are actually aware that the existence of unemployment is a serious embarrassment to them and politicians will do everything they know how to do to avoid unemployment.

“This applies whether they are Conservative or Labour, but the facts of economic life are that full employment can only be achieved by the need to balance our external commitments.” SKILLED STAFF Mr Shand said that industry should be looking forward to the requirements of a few years hence in skilled personnel. He had no doubt that the period of apprenticeship must be shortened and the price which the young apprentice had to pay for acquiring his skills by working for a period at lower rates than he might otherwise be able to earn, should be reduced. “We must provide the extra training or opportunity to acquire the skills in a shorter time, by greater concentration of full-time industrial training in the polytechnics,” he said