Reprinted from
American Federationist
June, 1938, Issue
YOUNG AND OLD LOOK FOR W^NC
CORRINGTON GlLL
Assistant Administrator, Works Progress Administration
MASS unemployment falls with
crudest severity at both ends
of the worker's life span.
When a large labor surplus exists,
competition for what jobs there are
prompts industry to select the cream
of the market and to reject many
workers who would find it easy to
get jobs in better times. With large
numbers of eager workers to pick
from, employers prefer workers who
are old enough to have had practical
experience but not so old that they
have lost their speed and vigor. Un¬
employment, therefore, becomes in¬
creasingly concentrated among work¬
ers in the younger and older age
ranges.
This is really the nub of the age
problem. The factors which jostle
workers out of jobs or keep them
from getting jobs are many and var¬
ied, but among them age is one of the
most important. The plight of the
jobless man past 45 has been well
dramatized and special drives have
been undertaken in his behalf. How¬
ever, an equally important part of the
age problem has been neglected. Idle
youth, too, has been piling up in the
labor market because they cannot suc¬
cessfully compete for jobs.
Generally speaking the employable
population can be separated into three
broad age groups. When you look
for work it makes a good deal of dif¬
ference whether you find yourself in
one of these groups or another. There
are the young with little or no indus¬
trial background, from 16 to 24, the
experienced workers with maximum
physical vigor from 25 to 44, and the
older workers 45 to 64, many of
whom can no longer maintain the pace
of modern industry. Of course, these
divisions are only approximate. There
is no definite age at which workers as
a group pass from one employability
category to another. One man may
be a well-trained mechanic at 22; an¬
other of the same age may be just
leaving school or working behind a
soda fountain or as a bell hop. One
may be superannuated at 50 while
another-just as old may be strong and
constantly learning new skills. Still,
the age factor does separate workers
into three groups which differ signifi¬
cantly in the ability to find jobs.
Using this threefold division, we
find from the 1930 census that work¬
ers under 25 made up one-fourth of
all workers, those between the age of
25 to 44 about one-half, and those
from 45 to 64 another fourth. In
other words, one-half of all the work¬
ers were in one or the other of what
have come to be recognized as prob¬
lem groups because of age. This is
not to say there is no problem for
workers in the intermediate age range.
Unemployment affects all sections of
the labor force but the blow falls
harder, and its effects last longer, on
the young and on the old.
Youth in the Labor Supply
In 1930, when the amount of un¬
employment was small compared to
more recent years, the difficulty of
youth in finding jobs had not yet
clearly emerged as a special problem.
583
Works Progress Administration
TRANSIENT YOUTHS SHOWN HUDDLED AROUND FIRE FOR WARMTH IN RAILROAD FREIGHT YARD.
YOUNG AND OLD LOOK FOR WORK
585
lese workers from 16 to 24 were
j only important source of new man
wer. They had been moving read-
from schools into factories, into
prenticeships, into sales and clerical
3s, and into all the other kinds of
>rk which ordinarily offer opportu-
:ies for the young and untrained.
Throughout the depression, how-
er, new openings have been far too
w to absorb all the young people,
d inexperienced workers with noth-
y but their youth to recommend
em have piled up in disproportion-
e numbers among the unemployed,
jar by year they have been moving
om school into a glutted labor mar-
t to seek jobs. In practically all
dustries and all communities there
;re too few jobs to go around. The
riousness of the unemployed youth
oblem became increasingly acute.
Yet acute as it is, the problem of
iuth has received inadequate public
tention. Young people, many of
em, unable to find employment, have
mained at home or when family
sources permitted have prolonged
eir schooling. The tragedy of their
ilure to follow the normal course
om school to work has been hidden
kind an outwardly normal family
lationship. But the tragedy has
en there all the same.
Special factors in the case of idle
iuth emphasize the danger of a pro¬
nged delay in finding work. The
st years out of school are important
ars, not only as regards work expe-
jnce but as regards social and moral
titudes as well. A worker unable to
id a job at 16, 18 or 20 finds as the
bless years drag on that unemploy-
ent is erecting higher and higher bar-
jrs against him. He is turned down
;ain and again by employers who
prefer to pick from the current crop
of school and college graduates rather
than from the slightly older unem¬
ployed graduates. A worker of 25
who has never had a steady job is not
likely to get one, and in most instances
he could not easily hold it if he did.
Such youth, maladjusted economi¬
cally, are not easily absorbed into the
normal society around them. A sys¬
tem which does not offer them partici¬
pation in self-sustaining work cannot
expect their effective participation in
other matters. Young people, un¬
trained to work, insecure and frus¬
trated today, do not readily become
substantial assets tomorrow. The
scars of depression will be borne by
all workers who have experienced it
but the young will carry them longer.
The first age tables released from
the recent Unemployment Registra¬
tion tell the story. For 16 states,
nearly one-third of those reporting as
out of work in November 1937 be¬
long in the youth group. Even this
heavy concentration of youth is not
surprising to those who have been
closely connected with relief problems.
It merely confirms evidence provided
by comprehensive surveys of employ¬
able relief workers extending back to
1934-
The number of young persons em¬
ployed on Government work projects
emphasizes their plight. The WPA,
it is true, employs mainly heads of
families so that youth are underrepre-
sented. However, the CCC and NYA
programs consist almost wholly of
youth and projects on certain other
parts of the program, for example,
the forestry and conservation projects
of the National Park Service and the
Department of Agriculture, provide
employment for considerable numbers
586
AMERICAN FEDERATIONIST
of youth. When these are all put to¬
gether we find that somewhat more
than one-fourth of all workers on the
Program come from the youth group.
That youth find it more difficult to
secure jobs than workers in the in¬
termediate age group is definitely re¬
vealed by a series of Government
surveys during the last three years.
These studies have uniformly indi¬
cated that the rate of movement from
relief into private employment is con¬
siderably lower for the youth group
th^n for workers between 25 and 44.
On the average, the younger worker
on relief appears to have had about
half as good a chance to secure private
employment as the worker in the pre¬
ferred age range. Even those un¬
employed youth who were fortunate
enough to have gained some work
experience are at a disadvantage com¬
pared to workers 25-44. These sur¬
veys of movement into private em¬
ployment have been conducted in
representative and widely distributed
areas over a sufficient period of time
to prove that the youth problem has
been with us for years and is still very
serious.
Further evidence on the piling up
of youth among the unemployed is to
be found in the registrations of the
public employment service. Here they
constitute nearly one-third of new ap¬
plicants. During most of 1935 and
1936 youth who registered were not
securing their share of placements.
But in the first part of 1937, the situa¬
tion changed. Opportunities for
placement of youth began to show defi¬
nite improvement. This rise has been
generally hailed as a highly significant
development but its importance can be
easily exaggerated.
The most obvious and probably the
correct explanation for the rising
placements of youth in the early
months of 1937 is that reemployment
has proceeded to a point at which the
bulk of the most employable workers
between 25 and 44 who were regis¬
tered with the public employment
service had already secured private
jobs. Employers, faced with the ne¬
cessity of choosing between a less
acceptable worker in the preferred
age range, or a first-rate applicant in
the inexperienced category, appa¬
rently began to choose the latter in
increasing numbers. Apprentice train¬
ing schools were everywhere being
revived.
Relaxation of employer require¬
ments as the surplus of labor declines
is a familiar phenomenon. Many
examples of it became apparent in the
summer and fall of 1936 when short¬
age of skilled workers in the building
and mechanical trades was acute. At
that time, employers became willing
to hire older workers so that many
men in their 50's or even 6o's found
jobs who had previously been barred
because of age.
It is probable that the rise in the
placement rate for youth which had
become apparent by the spring of
1937 is now being reversed. With the
recent sharp increase in general un¬
employment, preferred as well as
marginal workers have been laid off
wholesale. Employers will again be
able to exercise the preference for
workers between 25 and 45 which
they displayed in 1935 and 1936 and
will be unwilling to take on propor¬
tionate numbers of younger workers
until the most acceptable workers in
the preferred age range have been
reabsorbed.
YOUNG AND OLD LOOK FOR WORK
587
The Situation of the Older Worker
For older workers, who constitute
about one-fourth of all workers, evi¬
dence of an increasingly difficult prob¬
lem is to be found from many sources.
They were overrepresented in the
census of employable workers on re¬
lief in March 1935 and in practically
all tabulations of relief workers. Evi¬
dence of the growing plight of older
workers is supplied by the increasing
average age of WPA workers. Be¬
tween June 1936 and November 1937
the average age went up two years,
and the proportion of workers 45 and
over rose 4 percent. At the public em¬
ployment offices, too, older workers
have registered in numbers out of pro¬
portion to their relative importance in
the normal labor market.
A series of surveys conducted dur¬
ing the last few years show that older
workers are being reemployed at an
extremely slow rate. Figures on the
movement of relief workers to private
employment and on placements by the
public employment service tell the
story of increasing difficulty of reem¬
ployment with advance in age. Work¬
ers between 45 and 55 are much less
likely to find jobs than those between
25 and 45 and for most of the un¬
skilled and semi-skilled over 5 5 the
chances for reemployment under
present circumstances are almost neg¬
ligible.
Factors Affecting Hiring Policy
An attempt to discover just why the
hiring policy of industry favors work¬
ers who are neither old nor young is
almost impossible because no two in¬
dustries have the same policy and be¬
cause precise knowledge on the subject
is lacking.
Industry will naturally choose the
most efficient workers to meet its
needs. It will make its selections on
the basis of a formula evolved
through experience, one which in its
judgment, is the best formula. The
results may create hardships for indi¬
vidual workers or for society but the
dominant drive of industry is not
geared to protect the individual or
society.
Employers need a certain number
of workers to do special kinds of
work and those who seem most nearly
qualified get the jobs. If an automo¬
bile plant needs a tool and die maker
the age factor may play a small role;
skill is the paramount factor and the
supply of high grade mechanics is so
small that a well qualified older
worker is little handicapped. But if
workers are required for the assem¬
bly line, skill is not so important as
age. Old men do not work on "the
belt." Young workers inexperienced
in industry would not be accepted for
either job unless there was a shortage
of men already accustomed to manu¬
facturing processes.
Modern industrial techniques have
brought revolutionary changes in pro¬
duction methods and regardless of the
increase in employment which may
eventually result, the make-up of the
labor force is changed. Old skills are
outmoded and new skills quickly
change with the constant advance in
methods. Mass production is achieved
by automatic machines, tended by
labor which is largely unskilled. The
old occupations which called for years
of apprenticeship and which offered
longer employment to older workers
are disappearing. The depression has
tended to accelerate such industrial
mechanization, to reduce cost by sub-
YOUNG AND OLD LOOK FOR WORK
589
stituting machines for hand labor and
to displace workers not in the pre¬
ferred age range. Two examples of
this process which clearly affect both
the young and the older worker are in
the soft coal and in the steel industry.
The coal industry, although partly
mechanized in some states before the
depression, loaded most of its tonnage
by hand as late as 1935. To take
West Virginia, the largest coal pro¬
ducing state, as an example, loading
machines were producing less than
four percent of the state output in
1935. During 1936 the proportion
loaded by machines jumped to more
than 11 percent. In one large county
which initiated the new process, the
machines loaded 79 percent of the
output that year. Since then the ma¬
chines have advanced rapidly.
The effect on employment was
startling. The machines automatically
cut the labor force in half in the mech¬
anized mines. Authorities on the sub¬
ject predict an elimination of 40,000
men (one-fourth of the labor force)
from West Virginia mines before
1940. And what is occurring in that
state is taking place at varying rates
of speed in all the coal-producing
states.
The old method of coal production
operated in such a way that a worker
could enter the industry at 14 or 16,
learn the trade of coal digging with a
friend or relative, and remain at work
until he had reached a ripe old age.
He changed his operations during a
shift a dozen times; he was more or
less his own boss and his skill im¬
proved with added years of experi¬
ence. A similar process enabled boys
to learn the non-mining occupations
underground. From the "boy" jobs
a beginner worked his way into the
transportation system and other aux¬
iliary occupations. By and large, a
mine worker could begin as a boy and
remain at work until he was 65 or 70
and thousands of them did.
The loading machine completely
changes the production method. Men
work in gangs and at one unskilled
operation all day under the constant
supervision of a "gang foreman."
The foreman makes all decisions nec¬
essary to keeping the machines con¬
stantly loading coal. Likewise the aux¬
iliary occupations undergo a change.
Electricity takes the place of boys,
endless conveyors replace the mine
mule and motor.
In the new operations there is no
room or need for boys (or young
men) to learn the trades—there are
no trades to learn. The job calls for
strong men who are quick, who can
understand and take orders with dis¬
patch. The older miner with his care¬
fully acquired skill, his mature judg¬
ment and his body bent to the old oc¬
cupations is merely in the way in a
loading gang.
The steel industry must be con¬
trasted with the coal industry in re¬
spect to opportunities it has normally
afforded to young and old workers.
Boys or old men in very large num¬
bers have never worked in steel. It
is an industry which for the most part
has required a maximum of strength
from its labor. But in the steel indus¬
try also technological changes are
having their effects on young and old.
In some of the occupations which were
of a highly skilled character trained
men could retain employment past the
45 year age line. It was the kind of
heavy industry in which a strong man
of around 20 could begin as a laborer
and in time work his way into a skilled
590
AMERICAN FEDERATIONIST
trade. Many of those now in highly
skilled jobs started 20 or so years ago
as unskilled immigrants just arrived
in this country.
The steel industry during the de¬
pression has extended mechanization
of its processes until it, like coal, is
permanently discarding men by the
thousands. A dramatic example is
afforded by the revolutionary change
in steel rolling mill technique, by
which 15 men can produce as much as
100 formerly did. "The old method
required steel to be handled more
than 25 times by hand tongs before
it was annealed. The new mechan¬
ized continuous hotstrip mill takes a
6,500 pound slab of steel out of the
furnace automatically, removes the
scales and rolls it into 1,000 feet of
hot-strip at the rate of 1,800 feet
(a third of a mile) a minute. The
strip is coiled like thread on a spool,
automatically placed on a continuous
conveyor, pickled (in acid) and an¬
nealed. All this is done without one
pair of hand tongs touching the steel.
Only a handful of men are required to
operate the electric control levers of
the strip mill." 1
Four to seven years were required
to learn the old skills in steel and men
got better at them with added years
on the job. Three months is the time
allowed to learn the new process. As
regards a hiring policy for future steel
labor a steel executive says, "A hand-
mill worker is used to producing ten
tons of steel in eight hours, and he
can't get used to seeing 1,000 tons
produced in a strip-mill in the same
time. We have to break in new men
1 Quoted from "85,000 Victims of Progress," by
H. J. Ruttenburgh in The New Republic, Febru¬
ary 16, 1938.
on the strip-mill who have never seen
a hand-mill operate." 1
By the very nature of the changing
methods of steel production fewer
men will be required to increase pro¬
duction and a different kind of worker
will be needed in the new process.
With the elimination of the old types
of jobs, another door is closed to
youth; and older men whose skill is
no longer needed can scarcely hope to
find new employment.
The manufacture of the new ma¬
chines to load coal or make steel, is
naturally creating jobs for some
workers, but displaced miners or steel
workers do not get them.
A similar story of advancing tech¬
nology could be told in many branches
of industry and agriculture. The
changes are not identical and all mech¬
anization does not bar the same age
groups. Other factors influence hiring
policy and sometimes the machine
process provides work for young
people. The fact that they can be
hired at lower wages is often a factor
tending to increase their employment.
Young girls can turn out cigars with
machinery and thus cheap female
labor has displaced the trained male
cigar maker. The assembly line of a
radio or small clock factory is tended
by very young workers, and in our
textile mills as well as elsewhere child
labor still exists, as the recent unsuc¬
cessful attempts to outlaw it (even
in New York) indicate.
Employment in certain industries,
such as building and railroads, has
been little affected by technological
change. The peculiarities of the in¬
dustries account somewhat for this
but strong unionization also has
played a very important role in cush¬
ioning the blows of industrial devel-
YOUNG AND OLD LOOK FOR WORK
591
opment upon the workers. But few
unions regulate the entrance of work¬
ers into trade. A segment of an in¬
dustry may be protected by union
action but trade unions do not con¬
trol industry as a whole. Factories
run away from picket lines and are
still welcome in other sections anxious
to offer a more docile and cheaper
labor supply.
It is difficult to determine from
available evidence on hiring policies
the full extent to which technological
and other changes have shifted the
preferred age for new workers.
Firms are generally loath to admit
the existence of a definite age line.
In hearings before legislative com¬
mittees studying the problem of dis¬
crimination against older workers, the
usual testimony of employers is that
any worker who can perform the job
required and can pass the necessary
physical tests, will receive considera¬
tion regardless of age. However,
definite restrictions are actually im¬
posed by a good many firms. A sur¬
vey of Industrial Relations Coun¬
selors, based upon reports from con¬
cerns employing more than three mil¬
lion workers, discloses the fact that
40 percent of these establishments,
employing over 60 percent of the
workers, had definite hiring age limits
ranging from 35 to 45 years.
Ironically some of the very meas¬
ures devised for the benefit of workers
have actually operated to handicap
the man past 45. Physical examina¬
tions, now required of applicants for
jobs in about one-half of large scale
industry, tend to exclude the older
worker. Since the health standards
of American workers are extremely
low, it is a simple matter for industry
to maintain a maximum hiring age
policy disguised as a health service.
Even the old age pension schemes de¬
vised especially for the older workers
have tended to handicap them in se¬
curing jobs since concerns having pen¬
sion plans have naturally preferred
to hire workers with a longer working
life ahead of them.
Workmen's Compensation laws,
which cover industrial accidents (and
sometimes occupational disease) in
practically all states, have also oper¬
ated against the older worker. Ex¬
aminations made by industry's own
doctors are utilized to keep down the
accident rate and so to reduce insur¬
ance premiums. Compensation laws,
it is true, make no reference to phys¬
ical examinations as a guide to employ¬
ment, but the effect of the laws has
been to create a widespread safety
campaign to reduce industrial acci¬
dents. Many employers believe
(though evidence on the subject is
mixed) that older workers are in¬
jured more frequently than younger
ones; in any event it is known that
older bodies take longer to mend and
have less power to resist occupational
disease. It is the pressure to reduce
the cost of accidents which rightly or
wrongly tends to operate against the
employment of older workers.
Age as a Factor in Industrial Lay-Offs
Figures on separations from indus¬
trial employment in this country are
too few to make possible any state¬
ment as to the effect of age upon
ability to hold a job. Opinions on the
subject are far from unanimous. On
the one hand it is claimed that produc¬
tivity is being stressed to such a de¬
gree that men are forced into retire¬
ment at earlier ages than formerly.
On the other hand there are many
592
AMERICAN FEDERATIONIST
who cite the additional consideration
given to the problems of the older
workers; and who believe that such
workers are given a break whenever
possible.
British experience on the subject
may be noted despite important dif¬
ferences in industrial organization
and in the background of the labor
movement. Sir William Beveridge,
from analysis of the monthly statistics
of employment published by the Min¬
istry of Labour, has discovered that
the risk of losing employment is much
the same at all ages from 35 to 64 but
that the difficulty of finding new jobs
is much greater for the older than for
the younger workers. The British ex¬
perience thus substantiates the con¬
clusion that the present piling up of
workers in the older age groups arises
not so much from selective lay-offs of
such workers as from their inability
to become reemployed.
Conclusion
A revival of business which carried
with it a volume of production suffi¬
cient to create normal employment for
the labor supply of the country would
go a long way toward settling the
problem of jobs for the employable
population. The best of the older
workers would be reemployed; youth
would be caught up into industry with¬
out an intervening period of idleness.
Meanwhile, at both ends of the
age range of labor, disproportionate
idleness is becoming chronic. The
pressing need of the hour is to reclaim
and preserve these two groups com¬
prising each a fourth of our labor
force. For the young this means
preparation and training for jobs to
come, for the older workers a reten¬
tion and broadening of skill. For the
disabled and sick it means physical
rehabilitation. For all it means the
preservation of morale and self-re¬
spect. Such a program is much more
easily prescribed than accomplished.
But that does not mean it cannot be
attempted. People do not learn to
work in idleness.
The Government's youth program
constitutes a constructive attempt to
deal with an extremely complex prob¬
lem, but neither the CCC nor the
NYA has room for all unemployed
youth; those who apply are restricted
in the main to the most needy families
and not even all of these can be taken
on. There is as yet no broad pro¬
gram to retrain older workers for
new occupations although Govern¬
ment work projects do help them to
develop new skills. Thus far govern¬
ment aid has been designed to relieve
a temporary emergency situation. It
helps only the desperate and expects
them shortly to go back to private
employment.
A permanent solution of the prob¬
lems of the unemployed, be they
youth, older workers, or in the middle
range, depends upon the restoration
of more nearly normal employment
by private industry. Until recovery
has reached a point at which workers
in the preferred age range have been
absorbed, both the inexperienced and
the older workers are not likely to get
their share of employment.