To Fill a Gap

In the twilight time between war's end and peacetime industry's resumption, how many men will tramp the streets looking for work? At least four or five million, says Richard Allen Lester, associate professor of economics at Duke University. In the newest study sponsored by the Committee for Economic Development (Providing for Unemployed Workers in the Transition; McGraw-Hill $1.50), Economist Lester gave his formula for easing the shock of mass unemployment on the nation and its workers.

Looking at current schedules for unemployment compensation, C.E.D.'s Lester found them far from adequate, the payments too low, the maximum benefit time too short. The national average of benefit checks (from state governments) is $13.84 a week. Average length of benefit periods is 13 1/2 weeks.

He would forthwith raise the maximum benefit to $20 a week, stretch the time periods to 26 weeks. Lester would try to do it by nudging the states to make more liberal use of their reserves, now in excess of $6 billion. To get the states on the move, he urged Congress to set up a Federal guaranty fund of $600 to $700 million to support any state fund that becomes depleted by prolonged benefit drains.

Assured of such handsome Federal aid, he reasoned, states which now cling to weekly benefits averaging as low as $7 a week could and would raise their scales. Lester estimated the total Federal cost of his program as about $1,250,000,000, a sum equal to what the Government now spends for five days of war.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.