“NOT JUGGLING WITH FIGURES”

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23501, 16 May 1938, Page 8

“NOT JUGGLING WITH FIGURES”

In his anxiety to demonstrate that no attempt is being made to conceal the true position relating to unemployment, the Minister of Labour is proving himself as much an adept at juggling with words as he is with figures, Mr Armstrong has just published another long statement on the subject, most of it pointless if not actually irrelevant to criticism of the Government’s claim that unemployment has been so reduced that it is almost possible to declare that it no longer exists. The Minister seems to think that all that has to be done to abolish unemployment is to call men who are a charge on the Employment Promotion Fund by another name than unemployed. He pretends that there is a vast difference in principle between classing as unemployed a man who has been placed on so-called relief work and another who has been placed in “ useful ” employment under award conditions. The taxpayer will find it difficult to discern any difference when both are maintained in employment at his expense. The truth is that there have been several changes in the method of presenting statistical information regarding unemployment. Under the practice that was adopted up to September, 1935, for example, the register included the number of men in fulltime subsidised employment. From October, 1935, to August, 1936, those men were excluded; from September, 1936, to September, 1937, they were included again; and, Ss from September, 1937, their exclusion was decided upon once moie, and they are excluded at the present time. The latest change the second made by the present Government—also involved the exclusion from the returns of men classed as unfit for work and placed on sustenance. Mr Armstrong deals with words rather than with arguments when he devotes so much attention to past practice. His task is to show that the method of statistical presentation puts the unemployment position in its true light; and that task is beyond him, as it would defeat anyone else who attempted it. His “ challenges ” to Mr Hamilton are simply childish. They are, in effect, an invitation to the leader of the Opposition to show that the Government is not finding work for men at award rates of pay. To admit that is not to deny the existence of unemployment, but to prove that the wages of thousands of men could not be paid if the unemployment tax were abolished. In the Abstract of Statistics for November, 1937, the number of unemployed as at September 25 was given as 36,450. Then the method of compilation was changed, with the result that in the issue of the Abstract for January, 1938, these September figures were “reduced” to 16,554! The latest figures available suggest that men on the unemployment register now number less than 7000. Mr Armstrong submits that that is a just presentation of the unemployment situation, although the fact is that the fund is also maintaining 8000 men on sustenance and probably half as many again in subsidised work. The statistical system approved by the Minister is, it is to be observed, not the one followed in the com-, pilation of the Year Book. In that publication men on sustenance as well as those working in industry with the assistance of subsidies from the fund are shown as unemployed, for the inescapable reason that they are all a charge on the revenues

collected by the Government for the specific purpose of relieving unemployment. In the circumstances it is futile for the Minister to attempt to confuse the issue.