FEWER SALES GIRLS NEXT YEAR: NUMBERS SHRINKING

Greymouth Evening Star, 2 September 1947, Page 10

FEWER SALES GIRLS NEXT YEAR: NUMBERS SHRINKING

! There will be fewer, not more, girls behind counters in New Zealand next year. And in 1949 there will be still fewer. Statisticians estimate, says an article in the August issue of the New Zealand Draper and Allied Retailer, that the total available female labour forces will shrink by about 1000 a year. There are, at most, only 187,600 women and girls available for employment under all classifications. Statistics have been completed to April, 1947. These figures show that there were vacancies for 9967 women and girls in secondary industry, 2362 vacancies in public administration and professional callings, 1185 vacancies in distribution and finance (which includes retail stores), 958 in domestic and personal service, and 296 in transport and communications. Vacancies in all groups show a tendency to increase. Higher quality personnel—that is, a more carefully chosen and more thoroughly trained staff —seems to be the only solution to employers’ problems, on the basis that a smart co-operative and an obliging girl will deal with more customers in an efficient way than an inefficient young woman. The State labour survey makes it apparent that there is little-point in planning business expansion calling for further staff ,particularly female staff. In the existing industrial situation, the girls required are simply not here to be employed.

New Zealand Violets Are Outstanding Blooms

Though she lives in Kent, the “garden of England,”'' Mrs E. S. Dawes, who is on a short visit to the Dominion with her husband, said she had never seen bigger or better violets than those grown in New Zealand. She indicated a bowl of violets which were helping to decorate the suite of the hotel where she and her husband were staying, saying that ■ early violets in England were grown under glass, while in New Zealand, she understood, they and other early spring flowers were cultivated out of doors.

The spring flower season here seemed, by comparison with the time of its arrival at Home, to be at least a month ahead.

Indications when they left for New Zealand, said Mrs Dawes, were that the fruit season at Home would be a bumper one, and she was doubtful if it would all be harvested. This was especially the case with cherries, which abounded in the area where she lives. A good part of the cherry crop is on property owned by Mr Dawes and farmed out.