Better Employment Figures A highly satisfactory feature of the pronounced
improvement in the unemployment figures for April 15th is that reduction is recorded in all important industries, and not least in the great basic industries. Coal-mining, engineeting, ship-building and cotton are all in a very much better position than at the same time last year, and the largest decrease in unemployment occurred in Northumberland, Durham and Yorkshire—the regions ;where the depression, in England, has been most acute. The actual figures of employment are the highest on record, surpassing the freak total of September, 1929, by 4,000. (Since then, of course, the population has increased.) The unemployed, however, are still more than two millions in number, and it is doubtful whether the figures can ever be got down to a total which we can regard with com- placence till some measures are adopted for spreading employment—a question to which attention is drawn once again in some pertinent passages in the annual report of the Director of the International Labour Office.
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