HEARTENING PROGRESS.

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 54, Issue 3894, 26 April 1937, Page 4

HEARTENING PROGRESS.

Good news on the trend of the employment problem" in Great Britain is supplied in the report that the national unemployment insurance fund closed the last financial year with a disposable surplus of £17,250 000. Even more important than the buoyant condition of the insurance fund is the fact that in the past year there has been a fall !n the unemployment percentage in every industry except eight whose records are a mere three per cent of the total. The insurance scheme covers some thirteen million persons, of whom approximately two millions at any given time are registered as out of work. But the number of those who have been out of work continuously for a year is only 350,000, and the larger figure represents the measure of under-employment, or intermittent or seasonal employment, which must always present a difficult phase of the problem in Britain. Just how difficult it is may be judged from some statistics presented in The Contemporary Review. It is shown that nearly 40 per cent of the insured population registered as unemployed at some time during the year, and, allowing for two dependents each, it is estimated that fifteen million persons have direct contact with the unemployment regulations annually. It is in the study of this phase of the problem that the reduction of hours of employment comes to the front. No great progress in that direction may be expected, however, while the exporting industries are struggling vainly to keep their place in world competition. Fortunately, British secondary industry has taken a new lease of life in supplying goods an! services for the home market, and in less than ten years the workers so employed have risen in number from three to four and a-quarter millions.