Occupational Trends and Postwar Policy

Abstract

A FAIRLY ACCURATE FORECAST of the long-run trend in occupations would be of especial significance for employment counsellors and school executives, but it is a matter of concern also for all who formulate or influence economic policy. What are the trends during recent decades? Is there reason for anticipating that the war will modify fundamentally the directions in which our occupation trends have been going? History points out with reasonable certainty that other wars in which the United States has participated have hastened or retarded certain economic and social trends; but the general direction of such trends has not been basically modified by war. It may be suggested that social and economic trends are fundamentally the result of technological changes or of modifications in the ways in which mankind gets a living and associates together. Trends are changed in direction, or slowed down by such obstacles as customs, habits, institutions, vested interests, and the desire for security which leads men and women to cling to the familiar. Certain European countries which have been occupied by military forces and devastated by the conflict may undergo revolutionary changes in the postwar period. The cities and the countrysides of this nation have not suffered from bombing or the presence of hostile military forces. The United States, unlike many other countries, is a young nation with considerable natural resources and with a population not overly large or rapidly increasing. The United States has not benefited in a relatively large measure from the exploitation of undeveloped colonies or other areas. Certain Euro-