Providing Elbow Room

The Nixon Administration will have at least some elbow room in its touchy task of restraining the inflationary U.S. economy without risking serious unemployment. The Labor Department reported last week that, despite the 10% tax surcharge, unemployment in the nation's 79 million-member force shrank from 3.6% in October to 3.3% in November. The rate was the lowest since the 3.1% of October 1953, when the Korean War came to a close.

Among adult men, joblessness declined from 2.3% in October to a rec ord low of 2%, while teen-age unemployment dropped from 12.7% to 12.2%. Unemployment among Negroes. Orientals and other "nonwhites" also diminished significantly, from 7.4% to 6.5%, though it remained more than double the 3% rate among whites. One of the few groups that showed a decline was government employees. Partly because of the New York City school strike, they lost 17,000 jobs--most of them only temporarily.

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