LOCAL UNEMPLOYMENT

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXII, Issue 148, 8 June 1932, Page 7

LOCAL UNEMPLOYMENT

ONE MAN IN EVERY SIX. WHAT OFFICIAL FIGURES SHOW. According to figures supplied by the officials at the Hastings borough yard, unemployment registrations in Hastings now total 804. Of that number there are 167 men with three or more children, 454 with one and two children, and 186 single men. Counting the wives of the unemployed, and the minimum number of children concerned under the classification mentioned, the official figures show 621 husbands, 621 wives, 955 children, and 186 single men, making a total of 2383 directly affected by unemployment. Youths and unemployed women are not eligible for registration or for relief work, but their numbers must be considerable. Reckoned on the basis of last year’s local census, these figures bring to light the surprising fact that between one in five and one in ix of the adult males living in the borough are unemployed. Obviously there must be a great deal of distress in the town, for even the married men have been averaging only 25s a week as wages on relief works. It is to relieve some of that distress by the provision of warm clothing and boots that the Red Cross Belief Committee is at present conducting a collection for subscriptions, and the attempt to raise a sum of £5OO, which is the minimum useful amount, will conclude with a street collection on Saturday. The business centre of the town is not being canvassed till Saturday, but in the meantime collectors are busy in the 22 areas into which the local relief district has been divided for the purposes of the collection. The Red Cross Relief Committee performs relief work over a wide area, anj for the purposes of rural relief work is being assisted by the W’omen’s Institute and the Women’s Division of the Farmers’ Union.