Statement About a Special Message to the Congress on Special Revenue Sharing for Manpower

THROUGH the efforts of all its people, America is making great progress in the fight against inflation. At the same time, the American economy is also doing remarkably well at producing new jobs. Since I announced the new economic policy less than 6 months ago, more than a million new jobs have been generated. This is a good record. Though unemployment remains unacceptably high, it gives promise of further progress toward our goal of full employment without war and without inflation.

One of the greatest challenges of this industrial transition from war to peace has been the need to absorb more than 2 million workers from the Armed Forces and defense-related jobs into the civilian economy. Yet, it is not enough to point out that if they were still in their wartime jobs the rate of unemployment would be far lower. Nor is it enough to point to the large number of new young workers who have gone out in search of their first jobs.

This is not an acceptable answer for an unemployed worker wondering why he has no job. Though we are making progress, we must do better still and we shall.

We have taken many new measures to cut unemployment, and most are just beginning to take hold on the economy-and to have their effect in expanding employment. Among these have been:

--A tax program calculated to expand employment even more significantly during 1972.

--An economic stabilization program to ensure that the economic expansion we are developing is not lost in inflated wages and prices, but is directed toward producing more jobs.

--A transitional public service employment program to give meaningful work to the thousands of jobless Americans in the hardest hit areas.

--New international monetary and trade policies which will improve the competitive position of American industry and produce jobs for American workers.

--Expansionary budget policies for fiscal years 1972 and 1973 to help move us toward full employment.

There is more that can and should be done: One thing needed is to improve the quality of our manpower development programs, and to make them more responsive to the particular needs of particular localities.

On Monday, I will be sending to the Congress a message on manpower special revenue sharing. In that message I will again propose a way to improve the training and job placement service which we can offer to the unemployed American.

For too long there has been a gap between Federal manpower programs' promise and their performance for the jobless individual. It is time that we give our communities the flexibility they need to design programs better suited to their own special employment conditions. The Manpower Revenue Sharing Act which I will again propose in my message on Monday can help to do all of these things. It is clearly time that we do a better job of getting the jobless worker trained and a better job of getting him off the unemployment rolls and onto a payroll.