10
Wednesday, March 1, 1972
However, the growth of registered industrial employment had
been levelling off in recent years
-
from 14 per cent in 1968 to eleven
per cent in 1969 to five per cent in 1970 and to three per cent in 1971.
"This has occurred despite improved coverage of our statistica
and despite the growth of domestic exports in the period: by total
value they increased by $5,321 million or by 63 per cent between 1968
and 1971 and the price factor did not account for more than 22 per cent
of this increase."
The Financial Secretary said that productivity per man hour
had improved.
This was borne out by the fact that there had been a marked
slowing down in the growth of industrial employment at a time when
exports and the economy, as a whole, had been growing much faster.
He pointed out that there was an actual decline in reglatered
industrial employment in December, 1971 of 8,000 to 605,000.
"I believe this is to have been largely seasonal coupled with
the recession in the wig-making industry and relatively minor cut-backs
in plastics, woollen knitting and cotton spinning and the disruptive
effects of the dock strike in the western seaboard ports of the United States."
Increases in non-industrial employment in the second half of
1971 more than offset this decline and at the end of 1971, industrial
employers had notified the Labour Department of 17,600 vacancies.
The Financial Secretary said that, although industrial
employment was not likely to increase more than marginally in 1972,
"there is no prospect of pockets of unemployment building up."
On the other ..
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