Jobs, Jobs Everywhere

With hiring high and skills short, training is needed

Looking for a job? It is the best of times --for people who have marketable skills. Before long they should be able to pick and choose among high-bidding employers. For just about everybody else, it is . . . well, hardly the worst of times, but at least a moment for worry. The unskilled jobless, especially if they are young and/or black, can expect little help from any further surge in business, unless job-training programs are expanded. And the nation as a whole is either at or nearing the danger point where a little bit less unemployment means a whole lot more inflation--which would hurt the jobless, retired people and even most of the employed and their families.

What has happened is an increase in hiring. Unemployment has dropped nearly two points since late 1976, to 6% last month, when 535,000 people found jobs. The 93.8 million Americans at work in April constituted 58.4% of the entire population aged 16 or over, by far the highest percentage ever; the prerecession peak was 54.7% in March 1974.

The newly employed include many people who traditionally have the most trouble finding work. In the past twelve months the economy has created more new jobs for adult women (2 million) than for men (1.6 million). Black unemployment has stayed high because of a flood of new job-seekers, but the number of employed blacks last month rose 7.2% above a year earlier, vs. a gain of 4.1% in employment of whites. The number of blacks at work jumped from 9.7 million to 10.4 million.

The growth of payrolls has been far larger than could have been predicted from any increase in sales or production. Says one bewildered Government economist: "Based on G.N.P. growth, the un employment rate should be 7%, not 6%." Some other experts see no mystery; in their view employers are rushing to catch up on hiring that they might have begun two or even three years ago, but put off because they feared that the business expansion would not last. Says James Fromstein, vice president of Manpower, Inc., a temporary-help firm: "Management has taken heart with each quarter of recovery, when things did not fall apart once more. When all the doubt was around, employment decisions were postponed. Now those decisions to hire cannot be delayed."

Already there are signs of shortages of skilled workers. The index of help-wanted advertising is at the highest point since tabulations began in 1951. Michigan mines and power plants cannot find enough ironworkers, pipe fitters, welders or millwrights. Allstate Insurance Co. has such difficulty hiring office help that it sends recruiters to Chicago-area high schools in search of students who are learning typing and shorthand. Says Employment Manager Charles Bashaar: "We even have the Welcome Wagon lady give a pitch for working at Allstate when she hands out gifts to newcomers in her area."

Economists differ on whether these signs add up yet to "full employment," an increasingly misleading term that is taken to mean the point at which further demand for workers sets off an inflationary wage explosion. Henry Wallich, a governor of the Federal Reserve, insists that the U.S. is already at full employment, even with a jobless rate of 6%. Liberal economists put the trigger point at 5 1/2% or less, meaning that there is still some safety margin, but not much.

Herbert Striner, dean of the business school at American University, warns:

"Wages are going to be bid up, because in another month or two we will have run through all the available skilled people. The labor market is going to get tight, and we're going to be hiring people away from each other."

Meanwhile, 6 million would-be workers--nearly all unskilled, and disproportionately concentrated among the young and black--remain jobless. What can be done for them? The answer decidedly is not to pump up the whole economy with more federal spending, bigger tax cuts or a faster rise in the money supply. That would only set off a further competition among employers to hire the skilled at inflationary wages.

The Administration has greatly expanded use of the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act, which provides states and municipalities with funds to hire the unemployed for public service jobs, such as playground supervisors or road crew laborers. CETA funding has doubled during the Carter presidency, to more than $11 billion budgeted for fiscal 1979, and the number of jobs to be filled has leaped from 310,000 to 725,000. The program, however, is at best a stopgap substitute for welfare. It takes the jobless off the streets but does not prepare them for permanent employment. Says Bernard Anderson, an economist at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School: "Most of the money has been spent on Job Corps-type programs of scraping graffiti off telephone poles rather than skill-training for specific jobs."

A much sounder approach would be to provide federal encouragement and money for training programs run by private business. One good model is the string of Opportunities Industrialization Centers started by the Rev. Leon Sullivan in Philadelphia and now operating in 137 communities. OIC first gives the hard-core unemployed brush-up courses in English, math, dress and deportment, then trains them for specific jobs (welding, typing, data processing), many of which, local businessmen report, are actually there waiting to be filled. In 14 years, says Sullivan, OIC has graduated 400,000 trainees and placed 300,000 of them in jobs; 80% stick.

In January the Administration put $400 million into the CETA budget to start business-conducted training programs. Some of this money will be paid to the employer to make up the difference between a trainee's worth and his wage. Last week the Administration followed up with a more generous plan: tax credits for companies that hire the hard-core unemployed, up to $2,000 for each person put to work. The cost could be $1.5 billion a year. This week President Carter will entertain 140 business and black leaders at a White House dinner and plead with them to hire and train under the program. Chances are they will agree, because blacks need jobs and business needs skilled workers.

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