H—lla

<of and remedies for the problem. The new Board, having no clear policy for maintaining full employment, restricted its activities to various improvisations designed to mitigate the full effects of unemployment. 384. The building and construction industries were hit first, and probably hardest, the number of workers falling from 11,312 in 1929-30 to 9,505 the following year, then to 4,869, and in 1932-33 they reached their lowest level at 3,922. Factory employment •dropped from 82,861 in 1929-30 to 68,967 two years later. Thus the construction and manufacturing industries contributed over 21,000 to the unemployed army. Industries ■did not suffer uniformly ; indeed, the freezing industry's man-power remained steady. ■Capital-goods industries, such as those producing building materials (where employment fell 40 per cent.), motor-cars, furniture, &c., experienced the greatest fall in demand, whereas the processing of foodstuffs was not greatly affected. The industries employing the largest number of women were not among those seriously affected, and the drop in the number of women employed was from 17,355 in 1929-30 to 15,775 in 1931-32 ; in the following year the number was back to 16,467. These figures have been taken from the Year-Books for 1932 and 1936. 385. Railways employment was reduced by nearly a quarter, falling from 19,410 to 14,696. The Post and Telegraph Deparment reduced its staff by 13 per cent, from '9,719 to 8,494, but the remainder of the Public Service was maintained at a level never more than 7 per cent, below the 1929-30 level of 9,850. 386. No accurate estimate is possible of the course of local-body employment as from 1931 onwards, all subsidized relief workers employed by the local bodies being included in their figures. The same difficulty applies to Public Works employees, as men on various relief schemes were considered as Public Works employees. The payments from the Public Works Fund fell from £8,948,000 in 1929-30 to £2,419,000 in 1932-33. 387. After 1929 statistics of farm employment were not collected. Up to that date male farm workers steadily increased in number, rising from 102,771 in 1925-26 to 119,321 in 1929-30. It is probable that the number of farm workers increased during the depression for two reasons. First, in an effort to offset the effects of lower prices production was increased by over a fifth (dairy-produce by a third), and this almost inevitably required additional labour. Secondly, labour was much cheaper owing to lack of work in the cities. 388. No detailed information is available for the service industries and professions •during the depression. During the preceding forty years the number of people who gained their living in the distributive trades, entertainments, and other " tertiary " industries had been rising not only in absolute numbers, but as a proportion of the whole labour force. The decline in the volume of goods available for distribution and the decline in the volume of purchasing-power available to pay for many services probably threw many of such workers out of employment. 389. The combination of all the above changes in employment resulted in the numbers of registered unemployed rising rapidly from 2,466 in September, 1929, to 54,590 in September, 1931, 73,650 a year later, reaching the peak of 79,435 in September, 1933. From that point registrations declined. 390. Recovery from the depression appeared first in the consumers goods industries, and by 1935-36 most industries in this group were employing more workers than they had in 1929-30. The clothing industry in particular expanded rapidly, its workers rising from 7,616 in 1932-33 to 10,296 in 1935-36. A large proportion of these were women, as were also those in the new industry of tobacco-processing. Radio and ■electrical engineering were opening up new avenues of employment for men. Railways -employment expanded, but had not in 1935-36 reached the 1929-30 level, being 2,337 below. The Post and Telegraph Department was nearly back to its pre-depression level, and the other State Departments were 568 ahead.

71