Population and Employment

Manawatu Times, Volume 64, Issue 55, 7 March 1939, Page 6

Population and Employment

1 ‘Attempts to receive immigrants on anything like an adequate scale, whether in Great Britain or in the Dominions, will come up against the objection that their reception would increase unemployment,’ ’ writes Dr. G. F. McCleary in an article on the refugee problem published in the Spectator. “No belief is more firmly implanted in the public mind than that, unemployment shows that there are too many people in a country. Yet in the United States, which with its enormous area and resources could support a much greater population, unemployment is as prevalent as in England, though immigration has since the war been severely restricted and the reproduction rate has sunk below replacement rate. “Before the war, when the birth-rate in the United States was high and immigration unrestricted and copious, the population, and therefore the demand for goods and services, increased rapidly and there was little talk of unemployment. Mr. Maynard Keynes and other distinguished economists have shown that the decrease in our population that now seems imminent, so far from relieving unemployment, is likely to increase it. Unemployment due to a decrease of population will be specially dangerous, since it will be attributed by the public to any cause but the right one. There is hardly any subject on which public enlightenment is more needed than the economic consequences of a declining population. ”