PLENTY OF WORK OFFERING

Southland Times, Issue 24339, 21 January 1941, Page 4

PLENTY OF WORK OFFERING

NO UNEMPLOYED IN PROVINCE “There is practically no unemployment in Southland at present,” stated Mr R. A. Fernandez, registrar of the Social Security Department at Invercargill, to a reporter yesterday. Mr Fernandez added that figures at the end of last week showed that there were fewer than 50 men in receipt of the unemployment benefit in the Invercargill district, which included Bluff, Wyndham and Edendale, and nearly all these men were unemployable because of physical disabilities. In other districts of the province there were practically no unemployed. For example, at the end of the year there were only one or two men in the Gore district in receipt of the unemployment benefit.

Mr Fernandez indicated that no difficulty was being experienced in placing able-bodied men provided they were willing to accept the work offering. Employment had been found for a number of men under the rabbit destruction scheme, and the number of men em - ployed under Scheme 13 had been greatly reduced by men undertaking private employment. Every week men were going off Scheme 13 employment. It was expected that shortly there would be a keen demand for harvest labour throughout the province, though the response to the offers of school boys to do farm work during the school holidays had been disappointing, and this might suggest that the labour shortage in the country was not quite so acute as had been represented. However, there was no doubt that shortly there was going to be a keen demand for harvesters and threshing mill hands.