“Taranaki Central Press” THURSDAY, JUNE 10, 1937. UNEMPLOYMENT

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 253, 10 June 1937, Page 4

“Taranaki Central Press” THURSDAY, JUNE 10, 1937. UNEMPLOYMENT

—ll o _ Unemployment is proving a very sticky problem and the Government is plainly troubled about it. Ihe position is not quite as bad as Mr Bodkin represented it to be when he was j speaking at Kaiapoi, but it is obviously true that the Government has not been able to live up to its promises and is still a very long way from the fulfilment of its pre-election assurances. Trade is everywhere brisk, the economic recovery has proceeded rapidly, and yet industry and commerce are failing to absorb the men displaced when the slump occurred and cannot provide employment for the youths coming from the schools. I here is unprecedented activity in public works, yet the ActingMinister cf Labour has to appeal to the local bodies to find work for the thousands of able-bodied men still on sustenance. It looks as if the politicians did not yet understand the problem. Men trained in the orthodox school of economics, like Mr Bodkin, very naturally criticise the unorthodox measures of the Government, and they are undoubtedly right when they say that certain of the recent measures do tend to discourage employment. But it is necessary to look beyond New Zealand to see the problem in perspective. The Mother Country, with domestictrade booming and with an armament policy that is really the equivalent of a vast public works programme, still has 1,600,000 registered unemployed. The percentage of unemployment in the United States is larger still. Plainly there are factors in the problem either unrecognised by governments or too strong for them. Employment, of course, lags behind the trade recovery, for reasons that are well knpwn, but this is not enough in itself to account for the position. Probably the most important single factor in New Zealand is the slow movement of population. Full employment is possible only when the population is expanding steadily, and, although it may seem a paradox, there will be no complete solution of the problem until more people are brought to the Dominion.