24 AUGUST 1945, Page 2

Switch-over and Unemployment

The public' should not be surprised or too much distressed if at the time when such industries as mining and housing are crying out for labour a certain number of men and women displaced from munition works are temporarily unemployed. In some cases a time-lag between jobs is inevitable in the large-scale switch over from war to peace production. The factories which have been on munitions cannot instantly be ready for the manufacture of civilian goods. Machinery has to be adjusted, and, above all, materials are scarce and have to be allotted to the concerns which have the highest priority. Obviously, it would be sheer proffigracy to continue armaments production a day longer than is necessary— not only labour but valuable materials would be wasted—but its cessation will have the effect of releasing hundreds of thousands of workers, for not all of whom will work be immediately available. That, as Mr. Arthur Woodburn, Parliamentary Secretary of the Ministry of Supply, pointed out last Sunday, is where unemploy- ment benefit comes in. It is primarily designed to tide people over the interval between leaving one job and taking up another. In the United States fear has been expressed in some quarters that the number of Americans out of work in the period of readjustment may be very large indeed. That may prove to be a false alarm, but in any case the number of temporarily unemployed here should not reach large proportions, and it will be small if the priorities are wisely allotted.