The Upward Trend Though unemployment figures regularly increase after the
Christmas burst of special employment is over, and the February statistics are therefore likely to look a little disappointing, the facts contained in a:number of isolated paragraphs or articles on a Single page of The Times on Wednesday are impressive. Dismal as the outlook in the shipyards still is,' vessels to a tonnage of 331,541 were under construction on December 31st, as against 106,044 tons at the end of 1932, and the former figure takes no account of the number of liners and other ships contracted for at the end of the year, or of the 73,000 ton Cunarder on which work is about to be re-started. At a launch at Barrow the local situation was described as distinctly encouraging. The Fairfield yard at Govan was reported to be working at full pressure. The idle tonnage in the G.W.R. docks in South Wales was reduced from 115,000 tons a year ago to 59,000 'tons now, and engineering throughout the country was shown to be providing increasing employment almost everywhere. Such facts are only encouraging as indicating an improving tendency, and it will have to continue long to carry us anywhere near the level of normal employment. Satis- faction, therefore, must be tempered by recognition of the enormous distance that still separates us from the levels of 1929.
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