THE LABOUR MARKET.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLI, Issue 9135, 7 February 1910, Page 4

THE LABOUR MARKET.

The Minister for Public Works has a satisfactory report to make upon th«tstate of the labour market. He says that there are now employed on the public works only half the number of men for whom work had to be found at this time last year. The surplus. labour has been absorbed in harvesting, bush-felling and farming work./.Sufficient remain, however, to meet the requirements of the Government's new. policy of road construction in the summer time when climatic, conditions, are most favourable. With the close of the harvesting season a large number of men will probably be thrown on to the State ajgain, but it is intended to draft them to the railway works where operations are carried, on much easier in the winter than on the roads. By this arrangement- it is hoped to cope with the demand for employment that always becomes so insistent in the winter months. At any rate, it is not thought that the experience of last winter, with its re-, lief works and widespread distress, will be repeated, since returning prosperity will establish normal conditions again.