and the interunion department of the AFL-CIO. During the 1950's he worked with the OPEC in Paris and prior to that he served with the Commerce Department and the War Labor Board. Both this long and distinguished background and his present position make him eminently qualified to discuss the impact of high unemployment, most especially the impact on young people and on minority groups. Our other witness is Mr. Charles Killingsworth, professor of economics at Michigan State University. Throughout a distinguished academic career Mr. Killingsworth has concentrated his research on problems of structural unemployment. He is the author of "Jobs and Income for Negroes." I should also mention that Mr. Killingsworth was Chairman of the Wage Stabilization Board in 1952-53. So we hope for some advice this morning on inflation as well as on unemployment. At 11:30 a.m. Commissioner Moore, Mr. Goldstein, and Mr. Popkin are expected to join us to discuss the latest statistics. Mr. Ginsburg, please go right ahead. STATEMENT OF WOODROW L. GINSBURG, DIRECTOR, RESEARCH AND PUBLIC POLICY, CENTER FOR COMMUNITY CHANGE Mr. GINSBURG. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As you know, the center which I represent Chairman PROXMIRE. May I interrupt to say that I see you have a concise prepared statement. If you abbreviate it in any way, the full prepared statement will be printed in the record and the tables which you attached will be printed in full in the record. Mr. GINSBURG. As you know, the center which I represent is an organization of specialists in the fields of social and economic action which provides technical assistance to community groups of poor people in urban and rural America. I am happy to appear here today in response to the written request from the Joint Economic Committee to present the views of the center and its affiliated local organizations on today's high unemployment level, particularly as that unemployment affects members of minority groups and young people. It may be thought by many that when unemployment is listed by the Department of Labor at 5.6 or 6 percent or whatever, the economic burden that figure indicates is shared somewhat equally among the American labor force. It is my hope today to put that notion to rest. Focusing attention on the extent of joblessness amoung various groups of workers is essential if we are to understand clearly that unemployment has not struck evenly among all racial or age sectors of the labor force. For as always happens in a period of economic stagnation-such as we are now experiencing-it is the poor and the young and the unskilled and the minority group members who suffer most, who are plunged into poverty, who must bear the indignity and deprivation. In summary, there are six major points I would like to stress in this statement. Briefly these are: 1. According to the Department of Labor, only 600,000 additional jobs have been created in the past 2 years. 2. There are fewer persons employed full-time today than there were 2 years ago. 3. Not one of the 600,000 new jobs has been in the private sector. State and local governments alone account for more than a 700,000 gain in public employment in the period. 4. There are an estimated 700,000 jobless persons not counted as unemployed although they assert they are willing to work. They have become so discouraged by the shortage of jobs that they have given up the search for work. Since they are not looking for jobs they know do not exist, they are not counted as unemployed by the Labor Department. This results in a significant understatement of the unemployment figure. 5. While the nonwhite labor force has most assuredly grown in the past 2 years, it is a shocking fact that there are actually fewer minority group members at work today than there were 2 years ago, and 6. Young persons in the critical age group of 20 to 24 years, the period when they should be embarked on their lives' work, are faced with the highest unemployment for their group in the postwar period. These six facts result in a social pathology of enormous dimensions. For the center and the groups it works with, they present staggering problems. The local community organizations affiliated with the center are among the most imaginative and energetic of any in the country in trying to solve the problems of poverty, racism, inadequate education, and bad housing. How are they to cure the ills of the urban and rural poor with an economic picture so bleak and bereft of hope? And Mr. Chairman, if there is little or no hope that these groups can accomplish their goals, what of the communities that are not organized or of community organizations that lack the drive and commitment of the groups we are associated with? Unemployment, which has averaged 6.0 percent for the second quarter of 1971, is at a 10-year high. Even with the relatively smaller expansion in the labor force over the last 2 years-2.6 million-unemployment has risen precipitously in the wake of the failure of the economy to experience healthy growth. Employment in nonagricultural industries has increased by only 1 million in the 2-year period of June 1969-June 1971. With jobs in agriculture continuing their longterm decline-such jobs decreased by some 400,000 in the same 2-year span-the net gain in new job opportunities for the entire Nation. amounted to a tiny 600,000. The combined effect of the increase of 2.6 million in the labor force and 600,000 additional jobs resulted in unemployment for 2 million more persons as of June 1971, compared to June 1969. The underlying weakness in the job market is further revealed by examining the changes in employment in full-time and part-time jobs, as well as in Government and the private sector. Opportunities for those who normally work full-time and are scheduled on a full-time basis, actually contracted. In June 1969, there were 67 million workers employed on a fulltime schedule. Two years later, the number of such jobs had shrunk by some 500,000. The gains which added up to a net increase in employment came about through a 655,000 rise in the number of employees voluntarily working on a part-time basis, plus a 377,000 increase in the number of normally full-time workers working parttime because of economic reasons. The doldrums which have plagued the private sector in the past 2 years show up even more dramatically when one takes into account the figure on Government employment trends. Combined Federal, State, and local government payrolls grew from $12.3 million in June 1969, to $13 million in June 1971. (State and local employment expanded by 900,000, while Federal employment dropped by 200,000.) The doldrums which have plagued the private sector in the past 2 years derives from additions in State and local government employment, as, overall, private industry failed to register any job growth whatsoever. In many industries, employment has declined. In manufacturing alone, there are 1.6 million fewer jobs than there were 2 years ago. And if the private economy cannot provide jobs for people as they come into the labor force, whatever their race, the discouragement, the frustration, the hopelessness which besets this important segment of our population, present a major challenge to us throughout the country. I have mentioned the fact that there have also been a great number of discouraged workers. As you know, as you have gone through your many hearings with the Bureau of Labor Statistics personnel, in order to be considered unemployed, one must engage in some form of active search for a job to be counted in the labor force. However, during the second quarter of 1971, which was the last period for which such date had been published, there are a total of some 685,000 workers, 150,000 more than 2 years ago, who say that there is little chance for them to find jobs. They therefore are not pursuing the job search in terms of visiting companies, following up newspaper ads, and generally applying themselves to job hunting, since they know there are no jobs available. Those 700,000, in effect, are an addition to the officially reported number of unemployed throughout our country today. I would like now to turn to the unemployment problems which minorities face, be they black, brown, Filipinos, Indians, or from other groups. They reveal how harsh the effect of this slowdown in the economy has been on them. In my prepared statement, table I, I show the unemployment opportunities for male and female, broken down by racial groups. In that table you will see that there has been a 46,000 decline in the number of jobs which male minority workers have in this country today, as compared to 2 years ago. This is slightly offset by the improvement among jobs for women in minority groups, but the net effect is that for men and women in all minority groups, there are actually some 13,000 fewer jobs today than there were 2 years ago. Any urging for self-advancement-go to school, learn, find yourself a better job, improve yourself-must certainly fall on deaf ears when the employment picture is so bleak for so many persons. With an actual decline in jobs for minorities, the result has been a sharp jump in total unemployment among blacks and other minority group members of over 300,000, to a total of 1,087,000. At that level of unemployment, the rate for blacks for June 1971, stood at 11.5 percent; for whites, at 5.8 percent. The breakdown of job opportunities among the young in minority groups is even more distressing. Among the 16-24 age group, there were 88,000 fewer jobs in June 1971, than 2 years ago. The 20-24 age group showed a slight gain in jobs, but that was more than offset by the contraction of 140,000 in the number of jobs for the 16-19 age group. And I might add, as I point out in my prepared statement, that 30,000 of the 20-24-year-old minority male members who are unemployed are returned veterans from Vietnam. These are persons who have been in the armed services, fighting battles for Americans. They have learned various skills and yet, coming back, face this dismal employment picture. A full 17 percent of them, again according to the second quarter of 1971, almost one out of five is without work. I have included in my prepared statement a table, table II, where I tried to disaggregate, show separately if you will, the unemployment for both male and female as to race. You can see that there the count is not confined only to minority groups. When jobs become scare, obviously, the last to be hired are the newest workers, the less experienced workers. Both among white and minority members, those unemployment figures are among the highest in the postwar period. Anyone seeing the figures of white males in the 20-24-year-age group of 10.3 percent, or black men and other minority people of 41.0 percent in the 16-19-year-old group, or among females, 51 percent, which are the highest rates those groups have ever experienced in the postwar period, will get some sense of the distress and frustration and the worry that prevails within so many of the communities where we at the center work. The unemployment rate as of June 1971, was more than twice as high among minority groups as among the white groups. Which is saying that unemployment is bad for youth, but if you take it among black, brown, and other minority groups, the unemployment among those youths is even worse. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has been getting at some of this with urban poverty neighborhood surveys, where they take the census tracts which reflect the poorest communities within the 100 largest metropolitan areas. The figures for those areas, for all age groups, run more than twice as high as the national average unemployment. Part of the social disintegration which occurs in many of these urban communities shows up in the measure of those working, or seeking work. We find that during the 1971 period, there were 250,000 fewer workers in the labor force in those poor communities. We hear so much from leaders at many levels of American life: "Why doesn't he work," we find 250,000 workers in our biggest cities who are so discouraged that though they are willing to work they have just withdrawn from the labor force. Mr. Chairman, as I say, we work with some 18 community action groups around the country, and these groups are doing all they can to try to improve the conditions where they operate. I have brought with me a copy of our annual report which details some of the work they are doing. I would be happy to send to the members of the committee a copy of this report, leaving this one with you, so they can see the many efforts which these community groups are making to improve the lot of the people they work with. (The annual report referred to above follows:) Center for Community Change 1970 ANNUAL REPORT 'a humane and generous concern...' This report outlines in some detail the activities in 1970 of the Center for Community Change. The Center operated under generally unfavorable circumstances in 1970. The climate created by passage of the Tax Reform Act of 1969 made it more difficult for the Center to perform its mission The stock market dipped sharply reducing the fi nancial ability of private foundations to make funds available to CCC and those associated with the Center. And, of course, the national administration began the slow process of dismantling many programs enacted to help the poor. Despite all of this, however, and largely as a result of the hard lessons learned in the past two years, we believe CCC was able in 1970 to deal with greater skill and perception in helping groups of the poor set about solving their problems. What follows relates essentially the successes enjoyed by CCC and the organizations affiliated with it. It should not be assumed, however, that every project begun produced satisfactory results. For every one idea that turned into a successful program, probably four were rejected as unworkable Many projects undertaken by local groups were still struggling for survival as 1970 ended Some simply failed. On balance, though 1970 was a year which produced new advances for the local organizations the Center works with and for the people these groups represent. There are new health services new housing units, new businesses. It should be noted that no one who works with com- And until poverty and deprivation and repression are part of history rather than contemporary facts of our lives. the Center will continue in its efforts to bring about change in the distribution of power and resources in this society Ramsey Clark once observed that our greatest need is reverence for life a humane and generous concern This is the kind of America we believe in. And this is ach T. Conway Jack JACK T CONWAY Center for Community Change |