BRITISH TRADE

Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 20, 24 January 1936, Page 10

BRITISH TRADE

YEAR'S IMPROVEMENT

THE EMPLOYMENT FIGURES

(From "The Post's" Representative.) LONDON, January A.

The returns issued by the Ministry of Labour at the end of the year shows that the number of insured persons in employment at December 16 is estimated at approximately 10,599,000. This was 62,000 more than at November 25 and 340.00Q higher than at December 17 a year ago, and is the highest number ever recorded.

Moreover, the numbers of unemployed persons on the registers of Employment Exchanges also declined sharply, the total at December 16. being 1,585,900 wholly unemployed, 205,574 temporarily stopped, and 77,001 normally in casual employment, making a total of 1,868,565. This was 49,997 less than the number on the registers at November 25 and 217,250 less than at December 17, 1934. __-^

A satisfactory feature «f the figures is the continued improvement in coal mining, iron and steel manufacture, and the engineering and cotton industries. Employment also increased in the distributive trades, hotel and boardinghouse service, motor vehicle, cycle and aircraft manufacture, tailoring and textile bleaching, dyeing, etc. Oivthe other hand, employment.continued to decline in building and in pottery manufacture and there was also some decline in hosiery manufacture and in the boot and shoe industry. SHIPBUILDING INDUSTRY. The British shipbuilding industry is facing the New Year in a more hopeful frame of mind than at any time since 1930 (says the "Financial Times"). Since October, orders for merchant ships have been received in greater volume. . When work is proceeding in the shipyards during 1936 on the new orders obtained in the September-December quarter, it is likely that the merchant tonnage under construction will approach the three-quarter-million mark for the first time since the onset of the depression five years ago. Nevertheless, it has to be remembered that this volume of. merchant work will still be only half the amount in hand in 1929. ' ; Sir Francis Joseph, president of the Federation 'of British Industries, discussing Britain's trade with the world, refers to the increase of imports into those countries in which internal recovery had been progressive, in spite of the various obstacles to the circulation of international trade.

"In particular," he adds, "the demand for luxury goods and specialties such as expensive articles of apparel, motor-cars, and furnishing fabrics and the like is beginning to revive again. "As wealth grows, so the ingrained craving of men and women for something new, something more distinctive and novel, obtains freer play.

"This new development has already begun to bring benefit to British export trade, though its effect on the total has been partly masked by the increasing destitution of European consumers."