Unemployment in Colorado

Abstract

A SURVEY of the Colorado labour market and its “relation to unemployment compensation” , by E. R. Livernash of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has been issued in the University of Colorado Studies (24, Nos. 3 and 4 ; 1937). The survey was undertaken in the summer of 1936, and indicates that outside the provisions of the Act there are 45,000 agricultural labourers unemployed and 21,000 domestic servants, as well as a considerable number of those working in trading establishments employing less than eight persons. Unemployment of long duration is regarded as inadequately compensated, this type of unemployment being particularly heavy in the steel, coal and constructional industries and in declining industries such as the southern coal field. The problem of exhausted-benefit unemployment may be of major importance. The recurrent drain of seasonal unemployment, however, may be unwise, as annual earnings are often adjusted on a competitive basis. Much cyclical unemployment appears as seasonal employment, and this may mean a considerable volume of ineligible unemployment in a bad depression. The difficulty seems to be that in future depressions unemployed individuals most in need of relief will find themselves in the exhausted-benefit and ineligible classes. The law may be putting a premium on short-time recurrent unemployment. Mr. B. R. Livernash suggests that experience under the Act, enabling us to classify types of unemployment, may ultimately permit compensation being related more upon the incidence of unemployment, both in occurrence and duration.