Nonmanufacturing Industries. In the nonmanufacturing industries, employment gains were generally recorded during 1948, but some of these were small. The mining division as a whole, for example, reported only a slight increase in jobs over the previous year.

Chart 3. Number of Wage and Salary Workers

MILLIONS

5

The increased employment in finance and service industries in 1948 was closely comparable with the relative gains reported by other nonagricultural divisions.

Government employees numbered almost a third of a million more at the end of 1948 than at the beginning. Two-thirds of this increase was in States, cities, and counties; it was mainly for highways, hospitals, and schools, which were understaffed during most of the war and immediate postwar periods. Among every 10 new Federal employees, 6 were hired by defense agencies after the peacetime draft was adopted at midyear; 3 were placed on the post office pay roll; and

Construction contractors expanded their work force in 1948. (See p. 180). Wartime building restrictions had reduced employment in this division sharply during 1943-45. By mid-1946, however, the postwar construction boom was well under way; the 1948 average represents an advance to within about 100,000 of the peak level recorded in 1942.

Wholesale and retail trade establishments provided about 300,000 additional jobs in 1948, owing, in part, to the increased flow of consumer goods-particularly in durable goods lines. Trade establishments, which had lost many employees during the war years, recovered their position relative to other lines of employment in 1947 and 1948.

Occupational Employment Developments. Recent economic and social conditions have had widely divergent effects upon employment in various occupational categories. In the major "industrial" occupations-the crafts (skilled workers), operatives (semiskilled workers), and laborers— patterns have been quite different. Employment in crafts rose rapidly to about 8 million, compared with the wartime peak of over 74 million in 1943. The high 1948 level reflects primarily heavy construction activity, and a large volume of production of consumers' and producers' durable goods.

To meet the need for skilled workers, apprenticeship programs have increased tremendously-the number of apprentices in registered programs rose from about 20,000 at the end of the war to over 220,000 in mid-1948, according to the Bureau of Apprenticeship, United States Department of Labor. (Some additional apprentices are in programs not registered with the Federal Committee on Apprenticeship or cooperating State Apprenticeship Councils.) Almost half of the apprentices were in the building trades (see p. 181); other large groups were in training to be machinists and tool and die makers.

Employment of operatives, the semiskilled workers in industry, also increased, but did not surpass the war peak level of 12%1⁄2 million, after a postwar drop to 10%1⁄2 million. The expansion seemed to be leveling off in 1948. Nearly all of the increase after 1945 was among men; virtually no increase occurred in the employment of women after 1945. The long-term downward trend in the laborer occupations under the influence of industrial mechanization is manifest in their failure to return to the prewar peak employment levels of 1941.

Among the industrial occupations, therefore, the postwar economy has shifted emphasis toward the more skilled.

Employment in service occupations, other than domestic, continued to exhibit through 1948 the steady increase which went on throughout the wartime and postwar years, rising from 2% million in 1940 to 3% million in 1948. Both men and women workers in these fields gained equally.

The steady decline in domestic service employ

1 These and subsequent figures on employment in major occupational groups are based on reports of the Bureau of the Census.

ment, observed through the war and postwar period, seems to have leveled off. In marked contrast with the other nonagricultural fields of employment, domestic service accounted for fewer workers in 1948 than in 1940. This decline occurred in spite of increased demand for such workers. It indicates that domestic service is a field to which many people turn only when no alternative employment opportunities exist.

The

In the "white-collar" fields-the administrative, professional, clerical, and sales occupations-continued expansion was the keynote in 1948. growth of trade activity in the postwar period was reflected in expanded employment in sales and managerial occupations (about half of the latter are in retail trade). Employment in clerical occupations continued to rise, following the longterm trend. Employment in 1948 totaled 7% million as compared with 41⁄2 million in 1940; twothirds of the additional workers were women.

In professional and semiprofessional occupations employment continued to increase, although somewhat more slowly than in the other "white-collar" fields. Professional and semiprofessional workers numbered about 4 million in 1948, as compared with 3% million in 1940; a good part of the increase was in the small but rapidly growing semiprofessional occupations. Rapid expansion has been hampered by the long period required to train such workers and the great losses the professions of teaching and nursing experience because of marriage, relatively unfavorable salaries, and, in some cases, poor working conditions.

The postwar boom in the colleges will soon increase the supply of professional workers. College enrollments reached a new peak in each year beginning with 1946, rising to 2,410,000 in the fall term of 1948, according to the Office of Education, Federal Security Agency. This total exceeds the prewar record by about a million. Already those graduated annually (over 300,000 in 1948) have exceeded the prewar peak by nearly 100,000 and much larger graduating classes may be expected in the next few years.

Labor Turn-Over

The changing character of the labor market was shown by the movement in turn-over rates during the year. Accession and separation rates

tended to decline. Hiring rates turned down in both the durable- and nondurable-goods industries, particularly in establishments producing soft goods. Separations declined largely because of lower quit rates, offset in part by somewhat higher lay-off rates.

The quit rate reached a peak of between 5 and 6 for every 100 employees per month in manufacturing during wartime, and declined steadily throughout the postwar years. In most months of 1948, quits averaged below 3 per 100 employees, slightly less than in 1947. The gradual decline reflects increasing general stability and a change from the labor shortages of the war years. At the same time, the late 1948 level was far above the monthly rate of less than 1 per 100 employees in 1939, when about 1 in every 7 workers was unemployed and jobs were held tenaciously.

The lay-off rate for manufacturing industries as a whole showed some tendency to increase in 1948, partly as a result of readjustments in textiles and leather industries in the final quarter of the year. For most months, the over-all rate measured 1.2 per 100 employees in manufacturing. In comparison with the 1947 rates, however, this increase is rather slight. The late 1948 lay-off rate rose substantially but remained below 1939.

Work Injuries

There is a commonly held belief in industry that increased employment is likely to be followed by a rise in accident rates as new and untrained workers are added to the labor force. If this view is valid, the record for 1948 is all the more remarkable.

In each of the first three quarters of the year, the all-manufacturing injury rate was lower than the corresponding rate for 1947. Partially recorded experience for the fourth quarter indicates the same trend. In large measure, this improvement in the injury record reflects a growing emphasis on safety as a means of cutting operating costs, the greater availability of new and less hazardous equipment, and success in training production workers and supervisors in safe methods of performing the duties of their postwar occupations.

Construction activity thus continued as an important influence in the economy, contributing about 7 percent to the total gross national product.

Dollar outlay, because of the combined effects of a large volume of new construction and higher price levels, reached an all-time high in 1948. Physical volume (measured in terms of 1939 dollars), however, was about 20 percent below the levels attained in the peak building years of the mid-1920's.

The total of about 930,000 new permanent nonfarm dwellings started during 1948 approached the all-time peak of 937,000 units in 1925 (see chart 2), but the 1948 volume in relationship to popula

tion was equalled in the years prior to World War I and exceeded in 1922-28. Between 7 and 8 nonfarm units per 1,000 persons were put under construction in 1948, compared with between 10 and 11 in the mid-1920's. Housing starts unexpectedly declined more than seasonally toward the year end. Supplies of building materials generally improved during 1948, though some shortages persisted. The first slight decline in the over-all wholesale price index for such supplies occurred in October (see p. 169).

Construction Volume and Types

Expenditures for new construction put in place exceeded a billion dollars each month throughout 1948, rising sharply by 78 percent from the low in February to a peak of 1.8 billion dollars in August. In 1947, the monthly trend had been gradually upward until October. Peak expenditures of 1.5

billion dollars in that month were 82 percent above the 1947 low, also in February.

Record monthly expenditures were made in 1948 not only for new construction as a whole, but also for all privately financed construction, and for nonfarm homebuilding, nonresidential construction, building on farms, and construction for privately financed public utilities. Within the publicly financed group, the monthly level of dollar expenditures for all types of peacetime construction such as educational and hospital building, highways, and conservation and development work-was also the highest recorded since such data first became available at the beginning of 1939.

In each of the three full postwar years, including 1948, nearly four-fifths of all new construction put in place was privately financed. In contrast, slightly more than a fifth was so financed during 1942 and 1943, when the war construction