EMPLOYMENT CENSUS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 80, 30 August 1945, Page 4

EMPLOYMENT CENSUS

THE basis of economic planning, and its main limiting factor, is the number of persons who can be usefully employed in a given geographical region. Thus a census of employment, actual and potential, is essential before reconstruction and expansion programmes can proceed very far. The survey which is now being conducted throughout New Zealand by the National Service Department should provide valuable data on which future plans will, to a large extent, rest. Rehabilitation and expansion need to be tied in together. A great deal will depend on the thought given by employers and others responsible for furnishing the information asked for and the degree to which they can estimate present and future requirements. Since the future is always unpredictable the returns submitted would not be more than reasoned forecasts and the overall picture presented by an analysis of the data could only be provisional. At the same time, if possibilities are carefully examined without undue conservatism, the resultant survey should be near enough to the mark for broad trends to be revealed. One of the difficulties of compiling such an employment budget is to assess how far existing population governs the scope of industrial activity and how far people are attracted from elsewhere by the starting up of new industries. Which should be on the ground first, the manpower and womanpower or the industry? In Nelson, for example, it might be found that all the immediately available labour can be absorbed on worthwhile projects, both private and public, now being proceeded with or contemplated. In addition to that the planners will need to assess the extra worthwhile expansionist activity which can be put in hand and which would give gainful employment to labour from other places. The avowed Government policy of decentralisation lends considerable weight to that aspect. Then there is the youth labour group, most of whom ought to be capable of being employed in their own town or district instead of gravitating to the larger centres and aggravating the congestion already existing there. In Nelson’s case, too, there is the problem of seasonal labour and the prospect of establishing industries or dovetailing employment so that it could live and be used in the district the whole year round.