UNEMPLOYMENT.
Unemployment continues acute, although here and there there are welcome signs of improvement. The New York Board of Trade, on canvassing some five thousand representative employers, finds that eighty-eight per cent. of the- establish- ments report that employment is at least equal to that of the same date last year, although twelve per cent. of the employers report marked decreases of employment. Other figures are less encouraging. The American Federation of Labour, after a survey of twenty-four cities, announces that twenty-two per cent. of its reporting members were unemployed in February, as against twenty per cent. in January and eighteen per cent. at the highest point of the unemployment winter- of 1928. Conditions are worst in the building industry, in which between forty and forty-five per cent. of the Federation's members are unemployed.' The New York State Department of Labour employment figures, which in January were at the lowest point in fifteen years excepting three months in 1921', show a further slight decline. The Welfare Associations in various parts of the country continue to report abnormal demands for relief.
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