UNEMPLOYMENT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23529, 18 June 1938, Page 14

UNEMPLOYMENT

The Minister of Labour continues to circulate figures of doubtful . reliability relating to the extent of unemployment. The statistics which are now printed in the monthly Abstract omit any consideration of (a) men whose individual .wages are subsidised from the unemployment fund, (b) men employed on work the wages cost of which is subsidised, (c) men employed in indus-,. tries enjoying the benefit of State subsidies, and (d) men in receipt of. sustenance but classed as unfit-for any employment. When he has left out the many thousands thus excluded —all of whom are, to a greater or less extent, a charge on the revenue derived from unemployment taxation—it pleases Mr Armstrong to announce, and to keep on announcing, that unemployment in New Zealand, due to the beneficent activities of a Labour Administration, is virtually non-existent. At Cambridge this week the Minister ~ repeated his pleasant fiction. Of the nearly 36,000 unemployed of two. years ago, he said, only. 19,200 remained, that number including 8000 medically unfit who were - not accounted for by the last Government. In fact, he added as a revealing after-thought, it was probable that when the National Government admitted an unemployment total of 60,000 the true figures must have been nearer 120,000! Conversely, one supposes, , when Mr Armstrong confesses to having 19,000 workless men on his hands, the true figure, did modesty ■■ permit him to reveal it, would be ; about half that number. If the Minister were disposed to be anything but evasive—but he is not—on this question of the extent of unemploy-, ment he would be compelled to 1 admit that the term “ insofar as it admits of exact deflni- ’ tion at all, must comprehend all -., persons who are in any way a charge on the unemployment fund. No one is prepared to deny that the labour market has expanded in the past two or three years. Industrial improve- ; ment has created a demand for _; labour, and to a considerable extent this has relieved the unemployment position. But it is also true that men who are kept in full-time em- - • ployment by means of subsidies; paid from the : fund sMU number: anything up to 22,000. Mr Armstrong refuses to accept the, argti-. ment that, if unemployment has * virtually disappeared, there can be I no justification for the continuation of a tax which is extracting more than £5,000,000 a year from the, pockets of the people. He knows that he cannot do without at least - a considerable proportion of that money to keep an army of men in work. But it suits him to. play with words and figures for the purpose of . maintaining a feeble though doubt*; less convenient pretence.