How Much Unemployment Will There Be?
BARBASH, JACK
RECONVERSION How Much Unemployment Will There Be? By Jack Barbash THE statistical basis for anything; remotely like a precise estimate of reconversion and postwar unemployment ia lacking. So...
...The markets become free and each individual ia dependent upon his vision, his courage, his resourcefulness and his energy...
...Scattered and spotty surpluses in raw materials end plant capacity exist side by side with critical stringencies...
...But these problems are receiving detailed and sympathetic attention and there is every reason to believe that they will exercise no undue retarding influence...
...Since the government pays the largest part of the bill the wage inducement can be utilised at maximum effectiveness to get workers into the jobs in which they are presumed to be needed...
...The War Within France The French Information Service euppliee thi$ selection of comments from English newspapers on the invasion of Normandy...
...Unemployment after the end of European hostilities will probably not be more than 3 or 4 million—which need not he too serious and which in part may be unavoidable...
...There can be no doubt that the men of the maquis are materially helping our arms...
...And they have gone into action against the German army...
...Our capacity for mechanical inventiveness and resourcefulness haa been heightened and sharpened by the war experience...
...It ia possible to distinguish three progressive stages hi the war economy which will provide the underlying realities from which unemployment will stem...
...We should nevertheless recognise that much unutiluation and ¦nderatilisation may not be avoidable and may be one ef the overhead coats of maintaining the war production programs at required levela...
...Baruch and Mr...
...This article, however, has no official standing whatsoever and represents the author's personal opinions only...
...It is not your fault that our towns have been destroyed...
...Baruch and Mr...
...If the Asiatic war should end a year or more after German defeat, the likelihood of avoiding so high a level •f unemployment is much greater—even then however unemployment might reach 7 or 8 million...
...The economic aspects of the readjustment process will manifest themelves in two ways—in the necessary changes in business market relationship, and in the readjustment of the labor market to a peacetime footing...
...This is a fair summary of the intangible elements of the transition environment...
...A large part of the facilities and manpower will be absorbed in non-military production and services...
...Here in the lush greenness of Normandy, the most reactionary of all the French provinces and perhaps the nearest in many ways to the English, the Resistance has taken the same violent form as in the regions that suffer more intensely under the German heel...
...The length of time which it will take the economy to make these readjustments is the most significant factor determining the magnitude of the short-run unemployment problem...
...The engineering and technical aspects of the transition will perhaps be the easiest obstacle to surmount...
...2) the over-expanded (for peacetime purposes) air- -craft and shipbuilding, areas, and (S) the withdrawal of extra workers from the labor market...
...This is not to underestimate the importance of such matters aa the disposition of government property and speedy contract termination and renegotiation settlements...
...As these estimates are used here they should be considered as suggestive of the magnitudes involved rather than as clone calculations...
...It has its young men who are in the maquis rather than go to forced labor in Germany and every other person you meet is kin to a prisoner of war in enemy hands...
...It is even said that British soldiers have died with French bullets in their backs...
...I have made what investigationa I could, and-not once have I confirmed, any report that the French have taken up arms against us or that a aingle sniper proved to be a Frenchman or a Frenchwoman...
...It had to be done to get rid of the Boches.' From Georqe McCarthy Of the London Mirrw: "I have heard many stories of French treachery, particularly of treachery by French women...
...Hancock observe: "It la aa easier task to convert from peace to war than from war to peace...
...You meet demure young women who for months past have been getting into the forbidden coastal zones, some with false.papers and making careful notes of enemy defenses—and who should know more about these than the Normans who were forced to work on them ? There is a massive gun emplacement at a little place called I.ongues whose shattered concrete is an object lesson in the pinpointing of the target...
...The significant fact about the resumption of business market relationships is the shift from a situation in which government is the chief consumer...
...Parenthetically it should be noted that I am uiing the term unemployment in the accepted sense of workera who want work but are unable to get it The critical factor which will make for a serious amount of unemployment will be the inability of industry to make the necessary business and labor market readjustments of the kind sketched above speedily enough to utilise the idle facilities and manpower released by the audden cessation of the Asiatic war...
...At most what we can do here is to set forth some educated guesses and Inspired hunches which depend more on the "feel' of the situation than on any firm aeries of statistical date...
...On engineering grounds alone therefore reconversion is less formidable than might ordinarily appear...
...Hancock again, their judgment ia that technical reconversation will affect only about 20 per cent of the establishments now engaged in war work...
...It has alwsys been the Boches...
...Sufficient information is filtering through to show that militant groups of the French Resistance Movement are doing all and more than all that was expected of them...
...A few may be disaffected French corrupted by four yeara of Nazi propaganda...
...FROM the London Times "Enemy troop movements from the South to the battle zone in Normandy are being seriously harrassed by the men of the maquis whose operations have virtually caught the German army in France between two fires...
...The Government i*Ms each business what it ia to contribute to the war program—last what ia is to make and where it la to get the stuff out of which to make it...
...Nationally we can discern an increasing ¦umber of clusters of unemployment and situations in which labor shortages exist...
...The enemy is gone—and how they hated him...
...But here and there was the sullen face of some youth who had spent his most impressionable years under Nazi rule...
...Doing something about theae minor dislocations new may avert mere serious situations later...
...Each has the right to make what he pleases...
...Not a shell or a bomb was wasted...
...France will have its educational problem after the war...
...With the coming of war a sort of totalitarianism ia asserted...
...That is to say instead of the civilian economy being the consumer the Government war program has become the chief consumer...
...Patriotism exereisefi a strong compulsion...
...The climate of public sentiment should not be underestimated in anticipating the ease or difficulty with which we shall make the transition...
...The prevailing hunch ia that the Pacific war will take at leaat a year after Germany is defeated...
...There are three major elements which will determine the course of the labor market in the transition period...
...So long as the timing •f the end of European and Asiatic hostilities remain in efoubt, this situation will continue...
...tors as the development of raw material suppliers, the establishment of wholesale and retail outlets, the process of positioning for competitive advantage—in short, the whole range of decisions and actions which are pert ef the business and industrial system in the United States...
...The chances are that unemployment at this stage will increase but on the whole will be of minor proportions...
...These readjustments will hinge largely on the time lapse between the end of German and Japanese hostilities...
...With peace, the opposite becomes true...
...The problema which will command attention and action are such mat• Mr...
...In any event it it fairly certain that many more millions of person* will be released from joes than there will be new jobe to reabiorb them...
...The impact of these elements for the disorganisation of the labor market will be softened by the maintenance of a larger military establishment than waa the case in prewar periods and the extent to which the slack in military production in such essentially military items as aircraft and shipbuilding can be taken up by the transition and peacetime economy...
...How much nobody knows or is willing to venture a public guess...
...It is worth stressing that to the extent consistent with the maximum prosecution of the war produc-tioa program, we ah said avoid allowing pockets of idle facilities and manpower to persist and accumulate...
...These elements are (1) the demobilized armed forces...
...Governmental direction end aid diaappear...
...F. W. Perfect: "Some snipers are believed to be German soldiers dressed as peasants...
...There are some armchair strategists however who will hazard the notion in private conversation that Japan may give up the ghost fairly shortly after her ally is defeated...
...Much of the other kinds of reconversion will be a change in the outlet rather than in the character of normal peacetime production...
...The following observations stem from an appraisal of the factors enumerated above but will have to be taken on faith pretty much because I know of no way of demonstrating them statistically...
...The character of theae adjustments are psychological, engineering, and economic...
...In a little cafe or private house you can still find a bottle of wine and they say: 'We kept this for your coming...
...There is one clear-cut fact...
...From here on out until the certain defeat of Germany we are In the stage of the mature, highly developed war economy...
...I do not believe it...
...Middle-aged and elderly French people everywhere welcomed us although their homes in many case were in ruins...
...To refer to Mr...
...The great value of its Resistance groups has been in accuracy of information supplied to the Allied Intelligence...
...By Jack Barbash THE statistical basis for anything...
...On the whole it would seem likely that there exists a sufficient volume of deferred demand to absorb, within 18 months to two years, this short run unemployment, except for whet might be possibly regarded in peacetime aa a "normal" unemployment of three or four millions...
...From the London Telegraph's Correipondent...
...In the transition, the labor market will be much leas susceptible to such relatively orderly manipulation...
...Some economists hold that any serious volume of unemployment might frighten off some part of this deferred demand: this article makes no attempt at forecasting whether after the reemployment of the short run disempioyed there will be a profound and serious depression...
...They have sabotaged railway lines, they have cut down telephone wires snd they have rendered roads impasable...
...The second stage in this process will commence with the defeat of Germany...
...As a consequence a sizeable •mount of manpower and facilities will be released from war production...
...The problem of organising a wartime labor market ia comparatively simple...
...Finally we shall come to the point of the cessation of Japanese hoatilities and the fully developed reconversion process will be set in motion...
...The planning and execution reat upon one overall purpose and a aingle control...
...Nor n it likely that any aiseable public works program can begin to get underway faat enough to have a significant employment-creating effect at thia point...
...If Japan should collapse immediately or very soon after European hostilities are over, unemployment may hit at its peak something like 10 million...
...and still clutching one of the guns is a German soldier's hand...
...Barbash is a government economist...
...It is impossible to disentangle the medley of impressions that crowd in as you travel around this verdant countryside sprinkled with aged grey farmhouses and shrines and lovely church spires, with rambling decrepit chateaux whose trees are hundreds of yeara old, through blasted villages like Trevieres where there is not a house—such is the price of war—that remains whole or along lanes where knots of troops cluster round anyone wfffrcan understand them...
...Alan Moorehead in the London Express "Standing in the ruins of Carentan, yesterday, I argued with a group of French villagers: 'You are delighted the Allies are here, you say, but how ran you feel that when everything you own is destroyed, your town, your churches, your shops and your homes?' "They replied: 'We remember the German invasion of 1870, then again in 1014 and 1940...
...The transition from war to peace will require a series >*>t delicate adjustments on a large acale which may well be more time-consuming than the reverse adjustment from peace to war...
Vol. 27 • July 1944 • No. 31
