Buyers' Market

U.S. employment in April was down in one sector, up in another--and still at an alltime high. The work force in manufacturing industries dropped by 115,000, largely because of accumulated inventories and resulting layoffs in metals, electric-equipment and auto companies. The number of construction workers hired (210,000) was 40,000 less than anticipated because of inclement spring weather and delayed building projects. Up by 260,000, on the other hand, were the number of people employed in service industries, retail trade and all levels of government. In all, unemployment during the month hovered at 3.7% of the labor force, and the number of Americans at work in non-farm jobs rose 100,000 to 65,600,000 people on a seasonally adjusted basis. Such is the demand for labor that even the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics is having a hard time finding young economists to fill out its charts.

Nurses & Maids. Hardest hit of all are hospitals, who now need three employees per patient per day compared to 1.5 in 1946. About 62,000 more registered nurses are wanted; so are 3,000 janitors and maids, whom hospitals find hard to hire because of relatively low wages. Skilled engineers and technicians have long been in short supply, but so now are such blue-collar workers as tool-and diemakers, painters and auto mechanics, who can make up to $18,000 a year. Around-the-clock businesses like hotels are finding it difficult to compete for cashiers and telephone operators with 9-to-5 companies who offer a five-day work week as well. Playboy clubs find it impossible to hire enough bunnies. And in Walpole, Mass., where The Kendall Co.'s fiber-products division needs 60 new people and the employment office is up two flights of stairs, the joke is: "If they can make it up the stairs, they've got the job."

Rather than waiting for the climbers, Kendall, like many another U.S. company is actively searching for help. With its employees already working 50-hour weeks to keep production up, Kendall is hiring Italian and Portuguese immigrants and Puerto Ricans, even if they speak no English. Similarly in Miami, stores have begun to hire Cuban refugees who know only Spanish; clerks and customers carry out transactions in sign language.

Large companies are recruiting on high school campuses as they once did only at colleges. Southern Bell Telephone sends crews to high schools to demonstrate telephone jobs, mails to graduating seniors congratulatory cards (with job interview proposed), and takes out advertisements in yearbooks. Eastern Airlines, which is trying to increase its work force from 26,000 to 33,000 people, has hired retired stewardesses in 30 cities, sends them out to recruit younger girls. In Boston, John Hancock Life Insurance Co. advertises for secretarial help on rock-'n'-roll radio stations, brags that its main office is near "the grooviest shops in town." Competing New England Mutual Life Insurance will pay an employee $25 for persuading a friend to join the company, another $75 if the friend stays for a year. Avis rent-a-car uses prime-time television to advertise for car washers.

Ladies & Englishmen. Such shortages are changing the look of the labor force. Houston's Ada Oil Co. is now hiring female gas-station attendants who must be at least 5 ft. 6 in. tall in order to reach windshields. And--shades of TV's Josephine the plumber--women really are going into plumbing, because male plumbers are in short supply. Chicago's Checker Cab Co. has taken on 40 wom en drivers, and Deere & Co. of Moline, Ill., has women draftsmen, engineers and office managers. With even the supply of qualified women limited, some companies are going outside the U.S. for help. The Bendix Corp.'s Davenport, Iowa, plant, which last year went to England to hire eleven engineers, is now planning to go back to lure skilled blue-collar workers to the U.S.

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