Lyndon B. Johnson photo

Annual Message to the Congress: The Manpower Report of the President.

March 08, 1966

To the Congress of the United States:

I report on a year of progress and fulfillment. I report on a year of challenge and change. February 1966 marked the twentieth anniversary of this Nation's 1946 commitment to provide job opportunities for every person, able, willing, and seeking to work.

February 1966 also brought the fifth anniversary of our longest and soundest period of peacetime prosperity. It marked the 60th consecutive month of visible proof that the 1946 commitment can be met.

A RECORD OF ACCOMPLISHMENT

Five years of sustained economic growth have effectively demonstrated that this Nation can:
1. Pursue an economic policy which creates millions of new jobs and reduces the burdens of unemployment and poverty.
2. Provide the necessary job opportunities to convert a flood of teenagers into a valuable national resource instead of an urgent social problem.
3. Set in motion manpower programs to transform the deprived, the disadvantaged, and the despairing into effective and self-respecting members of the Great Society.

Last year was one of harvest--and of new planting.

The fruits of sustained economic growth were realized in terms of increased employ-
ment and earnings for the American worker. In 1965:
--The advance of 2.4 million jobs exceeded by one-third the increase of the labor force.
--Private nonfarm payrolls swelled by 42,000 added jobs each week.
--More than a million young Americans entered the work force, but there was work for them to do.
--Unemployment was reduced to its lowest rate in almost nine years.
--The American factory worker's weekly earnings reached $110.92. Although the cost of the things he bought went up 2%, there was 4.5% more money in his pocket to buy them after paying his Federal taxes.

Last year also saw the first combined effects of the new manpower, education, and
poverty programs. In 1965:
--More than 100,000 persons completed training under the Manpower Development and Training Act. Three out of every four were placed in jobs within ninety days after their course ended.
--More than 500,000 young men and women were approved for participation in the Neighborhood Youth Corps. The Corps helps those in school to stay there, and helps dropouts to return to school or begin work.

--About 200 area vocational-technical schools were approved for construction. 85,000 full-time students are receiving financial assistance to begin or continue vocational training.
--About 115,000 full-time college students in more than 1,100 colleges participated in work-study programs, which helped them to meet the costs of a college education.
--Work experience programs provided jobs, basic education, training--and hope and dignity--for 65,000 public welfare recipients with almost 200,000 dependents.
--Almost 30,000 young men and women were enrolled in the Job Corps. For many of them, it was their first opportunity for realistic training to help them find and keep jobs.

Across the land, more and more men and women became productive members of a great and productive society. More and more boys and girls, in and out of school, received the work experience and training which helped to fit them for responsible places in society and to save them from lifetimes of chronic unemployment and degrading poverty.

A year ago 5.0% of our workers were unemployed. Now only 3.7% are out of work.

A year ago many of our programs to provide better training and wider educational opportunities were only beginning.

Today they are supplying thousands of trained workers for our expanding economy.

But our very success in banishing the spectre of mass unemployment from our land has brought new problems.

To sustain high employment, and continue our record of price stability, we must work harder than ever to match jobs and men.

Our success in reducing unemployment brings out more clearly than ever the fact that there is poverty in the midst of plenty. We cannot rest content:
--when employers seek skilled and experienced workers while thousands cannot find work because they lack proper training and education.
--when factories in some areas are unable to fill orders because they lack workers, while chronic unemployment endures in other areas.

This year we must make a special effort to see that our human resources are not wasted.

We must accelerate the growth of public and private training programs and make them available to all.

We must bring jobs to workers and workers to jobs.

We must eliminate the discrimination which wastes our manpower resources.

Our goal is not just a job for every worker. Our goal is to place every worker in a job where he utilizes his full productive potential, for his own and for society's benefit.

To achieve this goal, I have outlined below a new program to make full use of all our human resources.

Making the transition to an economy of sustained high employment is our immediate task. But we must not lose sight of the longer run.

We take pride in the growth of our economy, in the achievements of our scientists and engineers, and in the ability of our dynamic private-enterprise economy to put new technology to practical use. But the requirements of new technology demand continuing adjustments in our work force. To make those adjustments as smoothly as possible, every worker needs a first-rate education and opportunities for continuing education and training.

A MANPOWER PROGRAM FOR FULL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY

Earlier Manpower Reports proceeded from a central concern with excessive unemployment: 6% at the time of the first report, and still 5% two years later.

Now, with unemployment below 4% and falling, the attention of the Congress and the Nation must focus on the manpower prospects and problems which emerge as the products of unprecedented prosperity.

An unemployment rate of 3.7% in February marks another milestone along the country's course toward full realization of its economic potential.

It was in November 1953--more than 12 years ago--that the unemployment rate was last that low. A year ago it was still 5%.

Attaining an unemployment rate of 3.7% is a triumph for our Nation's economy. It is a tribute to the public and private policies that led to this achievement.

Because it does reflect an economy operating closer to the full use of its manpower resources, our celebration must be tempered with caution. We must be alert to assure that the pace of our advance does not become too rapid, endangering the healthy stability and sound balance of our expansion.

Yet to conclude that we must proceed cautiously does not mean that we should slam on the brakes or throw the economy into reverse.

We expect our labor force to expand by 1.6 million workers this year.

Thus, we must provide about 4,500 new jobs each day--31,000 new jobs each week-134,000 new jobs each month.

Moreover, we cannot rest on past accomplishments when the unemployment rate for Negroes was still 7% in February. It was down from 9.2% a year earlier, and from nearly 13% in February 1961. But we cannot be satisfied when one out of every 14 Negro workers is without a job.

Nor can we be satisfied with a reduction of the unemployment rate for teenagers from 15 12% in February 1961 and 14 1/2% a year ago, to 10.9% last month. So high a rate for young workers still blocks far too many young men and women from beginning productive and rewarding careers.

Our achievement is worthy of celebration, but our task remains unfinished. We can and will move with appropriate caution to sustain our economic advance into even higher levels of manpower achievement.

The 3.7% rate is an average. It conceals the fact that some 3 million workers still lack jobs. It also conceals the fact that there are now more jobs in some areas and occupations than there are people to fill them.
--In the Great Lakes region, there is already a tight supply of both skilled
and unskilled labor.
--There are shortages of machinists for the metal working industry throughout the country, and shortages of building trades craftsmen in many areas.
--The new education programs could be stunted for a lack of teachers, and the Medicare program thwarted for a lack of medical and nursing personnel. Yet, while these shortages exist:
--There are pockets of chronic unemployment in many cities, in Appalachia, in the Mississippi Delta, and in other regions of economic distress.

--There are teenagers who need jobs to stay in school or to help support their families. They need to know that society has a place for them and a need for their services.
--There are millions employed in occupations and skills that do not fully utilize their capabilities.
There is no over-all labor shortage. But the unemployed and underemployed are not fully matched with the jobs available.

Specific shortages of labor can slow up the expansion of the economy. They can put pressure on costs and prices.

We are determined to do whatever is necessary to keep the economy expanding and avoid inflationary bottlenecks.

PLANS TO HEAD OFF MANPOWER SHORTAGES

The time to deal with manpower shortages is before they develop.

Effective manpower policies can reduce unemployment and at the same time head
off manpower shortages. I am therefore:
1. Directing the Commissioner of Labor Statistics to include in the monthly employment reports, starting in March, the fullest possible information on existing or threatening labor shortage situations.
2. Establishing an office of Assistant Secretary of Labor for Manpower, to assist the Secretary of Labor in the discharge of his manpower responsibilities under existing legislation and as Chairman of the President's Committee on Manpower.

3. Instructing the Secretary of Labor to focus Manpower Development and Training Act programs to meet prospective manpower shortage situations, especially through on-the-job training.
4. Requesting the President's Committee on Manpower to submit to me by July 1, 1966 a report on the recently announced coordination plan for all manpower activities of the Federal Government.
5. Asking the President's Advisory Committee on Labor-Management Policy to make appropriate recommendations to me on the manpower situation and related matters.

6. Referring the Report of the National Commission on Automation, Technology and Economic Progress to the President's Manpower and Labor-Management Policy Committees for advice regarding the Commission's recommendations.
At my request, the Secretary of Labor yesterday submitted to the Congress legislation to improve the administration of the Federal-State Employment Service. This legislation emerged from the unanimous recommendations of a task force of distinguished businessmen, labor leaders, educators and other manpower specialists.

I call at the same time on American management and American labor to take the affirmative action which is necessary to assure that inflation, resulting from the under-use of America's manpower potential, will not deprive us of the fruits of the most magnificent economic growth record in history.

A CALL FOR BOLD NEW APPROACHES

I am asking these agencies and groups to think boldly about new approaches.

What can we do to move the unemployed and the underemployed from places where jobs are scarce to places where workers are scarce? How do we move the jobs to the unemployed?

What can we do to encourage employers, who seek scarce skills, to redefine jobs in a way that employs more of the unskilled or semiskilled?

How can we enhance the mobility of workers in construction and similar occupations where demand shifts sharply among localities?

What can we do to mobilize the recently retired but still productive?

What can we do to make fuller use of our trained womanpower?

What can we do to break down artificial barriers against the entry of new workers into jobs that are hard to fill?

What can we do to insure that training and apprenticeship programs are open to all alike and are sufficiently extensive to meet our needs for skilled workers?

What can we do to help employers improve their own on-the-job training?

What can we do to encourage the employment of the physically and psychologically handicapped?

What can we do to facilitate the immigration of workers with scarce skills?

What more can we do to break down the barriers of discrimination that waste valuable manpower resources?

We already have many effective tools of an active manpower policy. In the year ahead we will expand and improve these programs.

Our most important new tool was provided by the Manpower Development and Training Act of 1962, strengthened by the Amendments of 1963 and 1965. Our manpower training programs must respond both to needs of people and the needs of the economy.

Our experience under the Act has proved that: --people can be helped through education and training.
--the economy will benefit from the availability of additional workers. Training will make useful and productive citizens of people previously considered beyond even the most elementary kinds of help.
--Mentally retarded individuals are being hired in increasing numbers by both Government and private employers, after successful training in various semiskilled, office and service occupations.
--Vocational rehabilitation and manpower development programs are being applied more extensively to inmates of correctional institutions. During their period of confinement, they can prepare for jobs when they are released.

Federal manpower training programs are conducted in close cooperation with private industry. During the past year, we have significantly increased the number of on-thejob training programs approved under the Manpower Development and Training Act. In occupations ranging from tool and die makers to nurses aides and shipfitters, people are being trained on the job. The employment rate of over 85% testifies to the effectiveness of these programs.

In the next fiscal year, we will train and retrain 250,000 persons under these MDTA programs.

An expanding economy now presents both the opportunity and the necessity to upgrade the skills of the underemployed. This will meet the demand for workers. It will afford opportunity to people to move into higher skill and higher paying jobs--as high as their abilities permit.

The second major tool of our manpower policy is the Federal-State Employment Service. It must assume even greater responsibility not only in placing people, but in providing proper job and training information, guidance, and counseling to all who need it.

The administrative framework of the Service must be modernized.

The quality of those who provide its day today services must be improved.

The methods of its operation need development.

More intensive research is needed to help guide our young people to occupations where they are most needed.

Vigorous manpower training and a revitalized job placement service are essential for a high-employment economy with price stability.

We will make the most of these tools in 1966.

THE SPECIAL PROBLEMS OF THE DISADVANTAGED

Certain groups in the nation have not shared fully in the benefits of our unprecedented economic expansion. Much remains to be done to achieve full opportunity for these groups. As we expand their opportunities, we expand our manpower resources.
--Unskilled workers, with almost double the national rate of unemployment, lack the training to develop their potential skills.
--Nonwhite workers, constitute 11% of our labor force, 20% of our unemployed, and nearly 25% of our long-term unemployed, they suffer the double disadvantages of lower educational attainment and lingering discrimination.
--Young Americans, who will swell our work force for many years to come, still experience triple the national unemployment rate.
--Farm workers, both operators and hired workers, remain the victims of high unemployment and underemployment.
--Workers in surplus labor areas, such as Appalachia, can benefit only from more vigorous economic development in their home areas or from migration to centers of employment growth.

No society can be truly great--and no economy can be truly prosperous--if high, long-duration unemployment for some exists side by side with low, short-term unemployment for others.

Special programs, suited to special groups, are needed to achieve full employment with price stability.

We must move again as we did last year to meet the impact of the more than 2 million young people--16 to 21 years of age-who will be looking for work next summer.

As we continue toward the Great Society, we will also bring increased employment opportunities to many groups.

--The rehabilitation and rebuilding of large blighted sections in our central cities will bring new vistas to those parts of America where opportunities are needed most.

--The work of the Rural Community Development Service will open up new opportunities for rural people, particularly in areas of greatest need. The new Community Development Districts, when pending legislation is passed, will bring greater planning resources to rural areas. The result will be higher levels of social and economic development.

--Our efforts under the 1965 Public Works and Economic Development Act will be stepped up.

--Joint Federal-State efforts under the Appalachian Regional Commission are also being increased. I have recommended quadrupling the expenditures for special programs to reach the more than 17 million people residing in that area. Such an increase means increased resources for highway construction, development of natural resources, vocational education and health activities.

Our economy cannot be fully successful, or our society truly great, while differences in economic opportunity persist.

The programs and policies of this Administration seek to reduce and ultimately to eliminate these differences. They are intolerable in a tree and democratic society.

INVESTMENT IN HUMAN RESOURCES

In a prosperous economy, the root of most problems of unemployment and underemployment lies in deficiencies in education.

We must repair these deficiencies where we can.

We must prevent their recurrence in the next generation.

Fewer young people now drop out of school. But the number is still too high. If current trends continue, there will be over 8 million school dropouts between 1960 and 1970. The average American worker already has more than a high school education. The dropout will be at an ever-increasing disadvantage.

I am particularly concerned by the large numbers of young men who fail the Armed Forces qualification tests and must be rejected for military service. One-seventh of the young men examined cannot pass the equivalent of an elementary school examination.

Low educational attainment is a product, and in turn a producer, of poverty, unemployment, and discrimination.

This Administration is determined to bring increased education and training opportunities to all Americans in the coming year. We intend to:
--Improve vocational rehabilitation training for over 200,000 mentally retarded, severely disabled and handicapped individuals.
--Train or retrain 250,000 persons under manpower development programs.
--Have Community Action Programs in 900 areas, urban and rural, throughout the United States.
--Fund preschool classes for more than 200,000 children over the full academic year--and for another 500,000 youngsters during the summer. Almost 150,000 teachers, teacher aides, and neighborhood helpers will provide the needed service to these children.

--Operate 124 Job Corps urban and rural training centers, able to enroll approximately 45,000 men and women at any one time.
--Provide 125,000 part time jobs during the entire school year and another 165,000 summer jobs in the Neighborhood Youth Corps to help poor young people stay in school. Another 64,000 positions will be available for boys and girls out of school.
--Offer services, under the Work Experience Program, to over 100,000 public welfare recipients who support 300,000 dependents.
--Give basic education to 75,000 adults under grants to States for improving adult literacy.
--Conduct 350 different projects involving 4,500 VISTA volunteers to provide educational training and related services to the poor.

These specific programs are in addition to the enormous expansion in aid to our elementary, secondary and higher education systems. For next year, I have proposed a total federal investment in education of $ 10.2 billion--more than double the 4.75 billion dollar effort when I became President. This will move us forward toward our goal of providing full education for every citizen to the limits of his capacity to absorb it.

Teaching methods and materials, no matter how excellent, are not enough. They must be kindled by ingenious, flexible and responsive teachers and administrators. I have urged that Congress provide the funds for a new Teacher Corps--to be made up initially of 3,700 men and women. Combined into teams of experienced and intern teachers, they will be sharing their skills and understanding this Fall with the poor children who need them most.

I am also calling for increased activities which will provide this Nation with more high-quality teachers for the handicapped and to meet the impact of school desegregation.

Manpower demands for professional personnel are also increasing in many other fields. New research and teaching activities must be oriented to meet those demands. Grants, loans and other forms of aid are being made available to States, localities and educational institutions. They include:
--A significant increase in National Science Foundation support of basic research and science education, critically important for the advanced training of scientists and engineers.
--University grants for research and training of advanced degree students in the space sciences through the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
--Help through the Health Professions Educational Assistance Act and other legislation to increase, by 1975, the number of medical school graduates by 50% and the number of dental school graduates by 100% over 1960.

--Training personnel to deal with the critical problems of water pollution under the Water Pollution Control Administration.
--Training programs for developing skills of persons who are needed in community development activities.
--Continued assistance in the development of high quality personnel for guidance and counseling--from elementary school to the university--under provisions of the National Defense Education Act.

We must provide full and free access to a first-rate education for all our youth, with later opportunities to develop their talents to the fullest measure of their ability.

The commitment of the Administration is to expand education and training opportunities for every citizen.

UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE AND MINIMUM WAGE

Sound fiscal and monetary policies, effective training programs, an efficient employment service, and expanding educational services can steadily provide new hope for the unemployed.

Yet, even in a high-employment economy, the protection of unemployment compensation remains essential. The present period of prosperity is the appropriate time to modernize and strengthen our system of Unemployment Insurance.

I have recommended that legislation be enacted to improve our system's financing and administration,
--to prevent abuses,
--to provide more realistic benefits for more workers, for longer periods.

Special protection is needed for those in our labor force who are still employed at substandard earnings. The minimum wage for American workers has been an essential part of national policy for almost thirty years. But both the level of the minimum and the number of workers covered have recently fallen behind the pace set by the rest of the economy.

I recommend that the minimum wage be increased and that the coverage of the Fair Labor Standards Act be extended to additional workers.

We must provide all possible assistance to those who seek work, and decent living conditions for those who do work.

The programs and policies of this Administration will be directed at these goals.

OUR OPPORTUNITY FOR THE FUTURE

This report has been of programs and policies, of legislation and appropriations. These are the means by which manpower policy is carried out.

The real basis of manpower policy is more fundamental.

It is the very essence of a free and democratic society.

It is our shared belief in the dignity of every human being.

This report has been of the gains of the past year.

To mark these gains is only to take new measure of the future. We are a people who draw confidence from the certainty of change. We are restless unless we can mold change to the highest human purpose.

With all that we have accomplished so far, with all that we are doing now, it is time to ask again: What of the future?

The future can be and ought to be a time of opportunity.

I see a future where the first two decades of people's lives are spent growing up, physically and mentally fit--training for citizenship and effective participation in their country's affairs--attaining the education for service, for a craft, for a profession--getting ready for their roles as workers, consumers, producers, and contributors to a free society.

I see a future in which education and training will be a permanent bridge between learning, employment and human development. Even as we develop new uses of technology, we recognize that people grow stale unless there is a continuous renewal of their knowledge, enrichment of their skills and development of their talents.

I see a future in which help to those seeking a station in life--whether it be the young dropout, the first offender, the older man with an outdated skill, the military rejectee--will have an opportunity to fulfill their hopes and expectations.

A manpower policy must be based on belief in the value of the individual and in the promise of welcome change.

A manpower policy should lead us to a society in which every person has full opportunity to develop his-or her--earning powers, where no willing worker lacks a job, and where no useful talent lacks an opportunity.

LYNDON B. JOHNSON
The White House

March 8, 1966

Note: The President's fourth report under the Manpower Development and Training Act of 1962 and the report of the Department of Labor are printed in "Manpower Report of the President and a Report on Manpower Requirements, Resources, Utilization, and Training" (Government Printing Office, 1966, 219 pp.).

The Fair Labor Standards Amendments of 1966, which provided for an increase in the minimum wage, was approved by the President on September 23, 1966 (see Item 479).

The Manpower Development and Training Amendments of 1966 was approved by the President on November 7, 1966 (see Item 588).
See also Item 112.

Lyndon B. Johnson, Annual Message to the Congress: The Manpower Report of the President. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/238456

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