BELOW MILLION MARK

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 190, 8 May 1940, Page 10

BELOW MILLION MARK

British Unemployed BEST FIGURE SINCE SCHEME BEGAN Nearly Halved In Past Year (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, May 6. The number of unemployed on the registers' in Great Britain fell below 1,000,000 during the month ended April 15 to the lowest figure recorded since the end of U-O when the extended unemployment insurance scheme came into operatloThe total was 982,695, fewer by 671,965 than at the same time last year. The number of wholly unemployed men on the register is now little more than half what it was in April, 1939, while the number of men temporarily laid off is little more than one-third the figure at the earlier date.

The figure for women shows a slight improvement on a year ago. Unemployment is now very low m the metal goods, manufacture for munition purposes, engineering, motorvehicle, and aircraft industries. The rate in the engineering and motorvehicle manufacture industries is not much above 2 per cent. In coalmining, agriculture, and a number of textile trades there has been a very substantial decrease compared with a 5 Tf individual industries the distributive trades showed the greatest decrease, the total being 68,089 fewer than a year ago, partly due, as in other industries, to the replacement by unemployed of workers called up for active service. Agricultural workers during the same period showed an unemployment fall of about 14,000.