In view of the rapid expansion in Britain's output of munitions and the construction of a great army it seems rather odd that, after the first year of war on August 12, there were still 799,000 persons on the registers of the employment exchanges of Great Britain, or only 432000 fewer than a pear earlier. On a superficial view it—diricut to recongllé the unemployment, apparently st heavy, with an expansion in the output of munitions, especially as hundreds of thousands of able-bodied men have been called to the Colours since the outbreak of war.
Upon closer examination, however this apparent inconsistency resolves itself. It is due, on the one hand, to the way in which the unemployed are counted and, on the other band io the very fact that Britain is changing over from the manufacture of goods for peace-time use to the production of munitions.
Broadly, all the. persons who are not actually working on the day of the count are recorded as unemployed. Some of the persons on the register are no longer fit for work because of ill-health or other disablement. Others are casual Workers whose $ services are not normally required on every day of the week and who happen to be out of a job on the day of the count.
Yet others may be out of work or on short-time through a temporary decline in the demand for their services, such as is occasioned by bad weather in the building trade or by the slack season in agriculture night of violent raids by air.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.