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

To the Congress of the United States:

This nation is prosperous, strong, materially richer than any in history--largely because of the knowledge, skills, competence, and creativity of our people.

But we are short of our potential. Many of our people do not adequately participate in the national well-being. Much of our human capability is not developed or used.

Moreover, our economy is changing markedly, in ways which call for new and better training, skill and adaptability.

The new tax cut will stimulate demand and provide impetus to further economic growth. But it will not directly solve such problems as inadequate worker skills and hard-core unemployment.

We cannot therefore rest content with our forward momentum or with our already considerable adaptability.

We must focus on how far we can go-and how better to get there--rather than on how far we have come.

We must raise our sights--and strive to realize each person's highest productive and earning capability. We must seek to develop more completely our people's talents and to employ those talents fully--to fulfill the rich promise of technological advance and to enable all to share in its benefits.

There must, in brief, be an active manpower policy--to complement our new national attack on poverty.

Not all dimensions or details of the active manpower policy can now be formulated, but broad directions are clear. We know that:

--This cannot be a responsibility of the Federal government alone. Business, labor, and all private groups and institutions, along with State and local governments, all have vital roles to play.

The Federal government can provide leadership, information, and other assistance, but fundamentally it is action carried forward in each community that will decide how will we achieve national objectives.

--This is a long-range task, requiring more than onetime or short-run efforts. Immediate action is necessary on certain evident needs, but we must move ahead also to gauge needs of the future and to undertake longer-run development programs.

In many respects, analysis of manpower needs is still in an early stage of development. We will have much to discover and apply as we proceed.

--We are not starting from scratch, however. We have been steadily raising our educational and skill qualifications through a vast range of activities. Important new efforts initiated in the last several years can help further to upgrade abilities and expand employment.

--No narrow approach will suffice. Manpower policy must blend and coordinate its efforts with other forces shaping manpower resources and needs--including educational, economic, scientific, health, social welfare, and other basic policies.

Underlying all efforts is a need to appraise total national manpower requirements and prospects as an essential basis for achieving full development and use of our human resources.

WHERE WE STAND

The past year was one of excellent economic growth. As my economic report noted in detail, national output, income, profits, and employment each moved up substantially to record heights.

The gross national product was boosted by $30 billion so that it now is more than $600
billion a year. Average factory pay for those employed has been raised to over $100 a week. Profits rose very substantially.

And employment was increased by almost a million, going over the 70-million mark for the first time in peak months of the year.

But unemployment persisted grimly despite 1963's strong economic advance. Overcoming that unemployment is the greatest immediate manpower challenge before and the new tax cut is a long step toward meeting that challenge.

Other major challenges on the path to full and creative use of our human resources are posed by our labor force growth and by the problems which technological adjustment raises for many individuals.

Unemployment imposes hardships on individuals and inflicts economic loss on the Nation. In 1963, high rates of unemployment also increased racial tension, aggravated difficulties in labor relations in major industries, and heightened doubts among many workers about automation's benefits. In the average week in 1963

--4.2 million Americans seeking work were unemployed. This was 5.7 percent of our labor force, an unemployment rate over twice that of most industrialized countries.

--another 2.6 million persons seeking full-time work were employed only part time. And additional heavy underemployment existed among our farm workers.

Such a waste of our human resources and loss of potential production cannot be tolerated.

Unemployment did not improve in step with the strong economic advance in 1963 because our labor force grew more rapidly than in earlier years, at the same time that new technology was raising productivity and changing demand for skills.

Even greater economic growth is therefore necessary--and we must develop also specific measures expressly aimed at special problems which block employment of many of the jobless.

The accompanying report of the Secretary of Labor describes in detail recent manpower trends and the current picture--including the features which characterize our unemployment. I want to stress these major developments.

The labor force expanded by 1.1 million last year and annual increases are expected to be even greater in the future. The largest increases are occurring among those under age 25 and among married women.

--Last year's labor force growth was nearly a third more than the annual average increase of the previous 5 years. As we look ahead, annual growth in the latter years of the 1960's is likely to step up to over 1.4 million, a third larger than last year and nearly twice the number of additional workers we had to absorb annually in the preceding half decade.

--Far more young persons are seeking work than ever before as the postwar babies reach working age. The youngsters turning age 18 next year will number a million more than this year.

--Large numbers of married women, seeking to increase family income, to provide better opportunities for their children, and to enrich their own and the national life, are also entering the work force.

Productivity and demand ships, meanwhile, are changing our requirements for workers.

--Manpower needs are shrinking in declining industries and in those where new machines and methods are replacing workers faster than new jobs are being created by new demand. Agriculture, whose employment declined a quarter of a million last year, rail transport, mining and some manufacturing industries continue to release workers into the pool of jobseekers.

--But more manpower, with skills not always possessed by displaced workers or by new entrants into the labor force, is required by other industries. In 1963 four-fifths of the new increase in jobs was in service, trade, and State and local government activities.

--Occupationally, unskilled jobs are declining in importance. Demand is expanding most in professional and technical, clerical, and service occupations. Requirements for education and training for employment are increasing steadily.

--Yet nearly a million young people are leaving our educational system each year before completing even elementary or secondary school. Each year more than 100,000 high school graduates with high aptitudes and interest in college fail to continue their education because of financial inability. And about 40 percent of all students who go on to college withdraw before completion of a 4-year program.

Imbalances flowing from these trends require our attention. Current and prospective shortages of needed skills must be better identified if we are to prevent any drag on our economic growth--and to help in providing young people and displaced workers with the education and training needed to benefit from opportunities in expanding fields.

The major losers in the shifting patterns of manpower supply and demand are the young, the undereducated and unskilled, the laid-off older workers with outmoded skills, and the unemployed caught in communities where the economic base has deteriorated.

--Among youth, unemployment went up in 1963 as fast as the increase in teenage labor force. Employment of teenagers did not increase at all, so that the first surge of rising growth in our resources of young manpower was translated into greater unemployment. Almost one teenager in six who seeks work today can find no one to employ him.

--Two-thirds of the unemployed have less than a high school education. One of every twelve workers with only elementary schooling is unemployed, compared with only 1 of 70 college graduates.

--Nonwhite workers, with limited opportunities to acquire skills and further hampered by discrimination in getting employment, suffer more than twice the rate of joblessness of white workers.

--Unemployed workers over age 45 remain out of work far longer than those who are younger. Some who suffer continued frustration in job hunting stop searching for work--they involuntarily "retire" and no longer appear in the unemployment count.

--Heavy concentrations of unemployment and underemployment plague many areas. Some communities in Kentucky, West Virginia, and other States in the Appalachian region and in the upper Great Lakes area have as many as a fourth or more of their employable people idle. The central parts of many of our larger cities are similarly afflicted.

ACTIVE MANPOWER POLICY

For manpower policy to succeed in meeting these challenges, we must have

--new awareness that effective action requires attention in such broad interrelated fields as education, monetary and fiscal and other economic policy, science and technology, defense, and social welfare.

--new willingness to experiment with fresh approaches and put resulting knowledge to practical use.

--new efforts to anticipate and prepare for future requirements.

--new institutions to coordinate separate activities as part of a considered overall policy.

These new attitudes and efforts must be geared to three fundamental goals:

The first is to develop the abilities of our people.

Another is to create jobs to make the most of those abilities.

The third is to link the first two, to match people and jobs.

Develop Abilities

Many forces influence human ability, but an active policy of manpower development must be concerned principally with (a) education at all levels, (b) training in occupational skills for youth, the employed, and the unemployed, and (c) rehabilitation and other development aid for those handicapped by physical, mental, cultural, or other disadvantages.

(a) Education must provide, as a basic part of its human development responsibility, the preparation needed for effective participation in our economic life.

But the education and related counseling of many of our people have not prepared them adequately to qualify for today's jobs, to absorb skill training, or to capitalize on new opportunities. And our systems of higher education are not providing the quantity and caliber of persons we seek for many high-level occupations necessary for national innovation and growth.

We must provide elementary and secondary education of high quality for all our citizens, to serve as a foundation for training and further learning. Such education increasingly has become a minimum requirement for effective activity and contribution in an advancing industrial economy. A modern program of vocational education also must be built to provide vocational skills for many who will not seek higher education.

We must provide broad opportunity for education beyond high school. A sound college education or junior college or technical school preparation is necessary for a rapidly growing proportion of occupations.

We must provide increased opportunity for education at the postgraduate level. The increasing complexity of many technical and managerial occupations makes education beyond college essential. Moreover, to foster the leadership resources of the Nation, we must augment the supply of qualified teachers and stimulate the creative talent of our managers, scientists, engineers, educators, and other strategic professional personnel.

We must provide extensive programs of adult education. Two aspects are critical: Undereducated adults must be helped to gain literacy and basic education, without which all employment opportunity is limited. And adults who have received a diploma must be encouraged and given opportunity to update and broaden their learning.

(b) Training is necessary to provide specific job skills. Reliance wholly on casual experience, even for lower skill jobs, often means less than achievable competence.

A new study by the Department of Labor finds, however, that all our public and private schools, industry, and the Armed Forces combined have provided some formal occupational training to only about half of American workers.

To make the Nation's manpower more adaptable and productive, and to overcome skill shortages which impede growth, we must encourage and expand

--training programs for the employed, to improve existing skills and develop needed new ones,

--training or retraining for the unemployed, to equip them for employment, and

--apprenticeship programs to provide the needed supply of proficient, highly skilled craftsmen.

(c) Rehabilitation and other special development techniques can enhance the productive potential of people beyond the reach of usual education and training programs.

Many persons on our welfare rolls or regarded as "unemployable" can be helped to rise to positive participation in the economy.

We must extend those rehabilitation, counseling, and related services which experimentation has demonstrated can build the hope, self-respect, motivation, and productive ability needed for self-betterment for many of our disadvantaged--the chronically dependent, the socially hostile, the mentally retarded, the physically handicapped, the emotionally disturbed, and the children being reared in deprived circumstances.

On each of these basic ability-development fronts, we have initiated new and promising steps in the last 3 years.

It is now our responsibility to carry through these new efforts, with needed resources and resourcefulness, to reap their full potential.

Thus, on education, the landmark Federal legislation of last year is enabling us to

--expand and modernize vocational and technical education.

--provide Federal financial assistance for construction of higher education facilities.

--enlarge aid for medical and dental education.

--increase student support programs in several vital fields.

On training, we can under recent Federal legislation

--provide new training and retraining programs for the unemployed.

--make available literacy training for the undereducated jobless who need it as a prerequisite for occupational retraining.

On related rehabilitation activities, we have begun to

--launch new programs to aid the mentally ill and retarded.

--encourage new emphasis on rehabilitation and work training for persons on public assistance.

--experiment with new means of aiding actual or potential juvenile delinquents.

--undertake demonstration programs under the Manpower Act to mobilize community agencies and to develop new techniques to improve employability of disadvantaged persons who need more than normal job training.

In addition, early this year I ordered the start of a Manpower Conservation Program to aid the extraordinarily large proportion of our youth--one-third of all our young men-found unqualified to serve the Nation in the Armed Forces.

Most of these rejectees will be rejected in the employment world as well if they are not helped to overcome their limitations while still young.

The effort to help them develop their potential--part of our attack on the poverty which cripples too many of our people--is already underway.

Specifically, I have directed that all new selective service registrants who are out of school and otherwise available for service be examined as soon as possible.

Those young men found unable to meet military service standards because of educational deficiencies are to be referred to local offices of the public employment service so that they may take advantage of guidance, training, and rehabilitation services to overcome those deficiencies. Those who fail on physical grounds will be referred to sources of assistance on their health needs.

Create Jobs

To employ all our manpower resources, our economy must generate sufficient new
jobs for

--the unemployed,

--the rising number of newcomers to the labor force,

--those displaced by machines, by changing technology, or by declines in individual industries or areas, and

--those outside the labor force who want to work as opportunities become available.

For those already employed, we want to open better opportunities to put to use talents and abilities not fully utilized in present employment.

Total employment has been growing, but not at the pace required by these needs.

This means that our monetary, fiscal, and other economic policies must stimulate greater job growth in the years ahead.

It means that we must improve existing institutions, private and public, to help in many ways to realize the potential for greater employment in urban development, housing, transportation, recreation and other services sought and needed by our growing population.

It means that we must do more to translate advances in science and technology into additional job opportunities providing services and new products either unknown or not feasible before.

It means also that we must try to identify needed relatively unskilled work--and to inaugurate programs to have that work performed by long-term unemployed workers and by inexperienced youth as a steppingstone to better employment.

We have been moving in these directions. Three efforts warrant note here:

--Already this year we have taken a major economic step to greater employment. The newly enacted tax cut will provide needed stimulus to employment expansion the rest of this year and in the years ahead.

--Area redevelopment efforts are helping to develop jobs in high-unemployment urban and rural communities.

--And programs to develop abilities are creating new jobs which awaited the development of qualified workers. In particular, we have begun to recognize that availability of highly talented scientific and managerial manpower stimulates the innovation and provides the leadership which spur the development of new jobs.

Help Match People and Jobs

Beyond upgrading of human abilities, there is vast need for improvement in other ways of bringing and keeping together workers and jobs. We must improve many activities which, while neither new nor dramatic, are nevertheless essential for the needs of many of our people and our economy in this increasingly complex age. Critical among these are:

Preparation for change. By increasing efforts to look ahead and prepare for likely technological or economic change, management and unions can ease displacement problems and meet new manpower requirements more effectively. This is elementary, yet we have not done as much or as well as we could. Improved government assistance of the types cited below can contribute materially to such efforts.

Information. Supplying of information on occupational requirements and manpower resources is a fundamental aid. Particularly necessary is improved information on current job vacancies, on emerging occupational opportunities, and on availability of qualified workers. Projections of probable need in particular occupations are an essential guide for education, training, and other policies aimed at developing the right skills at the right time in the right place.

Counseling. Youth and adult workers should have ready access to competent counseling to help them match their aptitudes and occupational preferences with opportunities for education, training, and employment.

Placement services. To fill jobs better and more quickly, we also must expand and make more resourceful the public employment services available to workers and employers for recruiting, testing, guidance, and adapting of jobs to fit abilities-on an inter-area and national as well as local basis.

Mobility. Beyond these services, additional aid is desirable to help workers or industry relocate to overcome geographic separation of workers and jobs--and to help migrants, particularly those from rural to urban areas, adjust to new work life in a different environment.

Progress is being developed on these varied needs in many ways:

--Management and labor increasingly are exploring and adopting additional means of easing worker adjustment difficulties stemming from technological change.

--Research on manpower needs is being expanded, notably under the Manpower Act, to develop new knowledge and techniques to improve our programs.

--Committees of distinguished private and public representatives have conducted special reviews of problems involving major groups: youth, women, minority workers, older workers, and scientific and engineering personnel.

--Experiments to aid mobility of unemployed workers are being initiated under a 1963 amendment to the Manpower Act.

--A Manpower Administration has been established in the Department of Labor to lead and coordinate many activities.

--A high-level government committee has been designated to review and coordinate economic effects of our defense programs. It will help us act to minimize potential manpower disturbances which might result from changes in the level and pattern of defense spending.

We must also be concerned with

Labor standards. Our work force must be assured of reasonable protection and income maintenance through minimum wage, unemployment benefit, safety, child labor, and other basic labor standards programs.

Elimination of discrimination. We must guarantee that no individual is barred from access to employment opportunity, or to the education and training necessary to prepare for it, because of race, national origin, age, sex, or other characteristics unrelated to ability.

To meet these objectives, in recent months

--the Equal Pay Act was enacted to prohibit sex discrimination in payment of wages.

--a new approach to industry's participation in a voluntary program was developed by the President's Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity to provide greater employment opportunities to members of minority groups.

--a new Executive order was issued, prohibiting Federal contractors and subcontractors from setting maximum age limits for most jobs, to provide equal employment opportunity for older persons.

--new apprenticeship regulations were adopted by the Secretary of Labor to promote equal opportunity in apprenticeship programs.

FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AS AN EMPLOYER

As the Nation's largest single employer of manpower the Federal Government should set an example of effective manpower development and utilization. Much is being done, and more will be done, to accomplish this. Among the major activities:

--Training and career development programs have been instituted to obtain maximum contributions from employees in all occupations. Special stress is being put on more effective use of high-talent personnel, including scientists, engineers, managers, and other professional manpower.

--Action is being taken to insure fair-employment opportunities in the Federal service. Particular attention is being given to provide opportunities for groups that traditionally have not done as well as others in the American economy: women, members of minority groups, handicapped workers, and older workers.

--Adjustment programs have been developed to minimize adverse effects on employees of increasing use of automation and of shifts in government programs. To effect needed reductions in personnel, emphasis is given to attrition and to transfer and retraining to meet needs of displaced employees.

--Better estimates of the government's future manpower requirements are being developed. These will aid in carrying forward training and fair employment opportunity programs.

--Recruitment by Federal departments and agencies at the college level is being better coordinated. And high-potential young persons with less than college-level training are being sought out and employed for Federal jobs as supervisors, aides, and technicians.

NEXT STEPS

An active manpower policy must also focus on needed additional measures. And it must provide new mechanisms to assess and to correlate all our efforts bearing on the Nation's manpower resources and needs.

Legislative Action

The Congress already has before it a range of proposals, some first presented in earlier years and several newly presented this year, which are necessary in shaping an active manpower policy. These are the major proposals:

1. Youth unemployment must not be allowed to grow unchecked. The rapid surge of new young workers and their rising unemployment rates require immediately additional means to develop and employ many who will not be aided by other available programs.

President Kennedy's proposed youth employment programs can help meet this urgent need, and I urge the Congress to act favorably on these programs as part of the war against poverty.

2. Poverty must be attacked through new and intensive combinations of varied Federal, State, and local government and private programs. My message on poverty outlines the concentrated efforts I propose.

3. Education must be strengthened. Pending legislation and the budget requests I have presented spell out the diverse efforts needed.

Let us not shortchange our future. Our people's abilities in the years to come patently depend heavily on the scope and wisdom of our educational investment today.

Elementary and secondary education improvement is particularly vital. No youth should reach working age without at least a sound basic education with which to build employable skills. Expansion of technical and adult education is another imperative.

We must also, as an urgent long-term investment in fostering leadership, better our programs of assistance for higher education. Needs are mounting for top talent in key scientific, professional, and managerial fields. Only by increasing the number of the most highly trained and competent individuals will it be possible adequately to design the programs, build the institutions, and teach the leaders of tomorrow.

4. Areas of high unemployment must be revitalized. I have requested additional funds to continue and expand the valuable assistance provided under the Area Redevelopment Act.

For the largest and most poverty-stricken region, the Appalachian area stretching over 10 States, I am asking the Nation to embark on a farsighted task. I am requesting Federal assistance for a comprehensive program to develop human and natural resources and eradicate the hunger, disease, ignorance, and hopelessness which afflict much of this part of America.

5. Overtime work must be examined critically to determine if it is feasible to convert regular and substantial overtime hours into new jobs.

I have recommended legislation under which tripartite committees will determine whether higher overtime penalty rates in specific industries could increase employment without unduly increasing costs. The legislation would authorize increased penalty rates where this is found to be so.

6. Racial discrimination must be eliminated. Programs to help economically depressed members of racial minority groups gain new skills will benefit little if employment opportunity is still blocked by discrimination.

I strongly urge adoption of the civil rights legislation recommended by this Administration, including requirements for Federal fair-employment practices applicable to both employers and unions, to help assure all Americans the right and opportunity to earn a decent living.

7. Unemployment insurance must be extended and its benefits increased. Nearly half the unemployed are receiving no unemployment benefits at all because of coverage restrictions or qualifying requirements or because duration of benefits is too brief.

The legislation I have recommended to remedy these inadequacies will improve financial security for the jobless and economic and social stability for the economy.

8. Protection of the Fair Labor Standards Act must be extended. To provide new or improved protection for over 2.6 million workers, I have recommended extension of

--minimum wage and overtime protection to 735,000 workers in hotel, motel, restaurant, laundry, dry cleaning, agricultural, processing, and logging industries.

--new or improved overtime protection to 1.9 million workers in the agricultural handling and processing, transportation, and gasoline services industries.

ADMINISTRATIVE ACTION

Many other necessary actions which can be carried forward under existing statutory authority require additional funds as set forth in my budget requests.

I want to note particularly that strengthening of the Federal-State employment service system's vital job market information, counseling, placement and related services is one basic need for which I have requested increased funds.

I am also proceeding on two new major administrative actions.

One is to develop needed perspective on automation. I have asked my tripartite Advisory Committee on Labor-Management Policy to undertake a study of the impact of automation and technological change on workers, unions, and firms, and of the problems of adjustment arising from such change.

I have asked the Committee to focus on what is being done and can be done by management and labor to meet displacement effects.

It is my hope and expectation that the Committee's report on what the private economy is and can be doing--and the recommendations it may make for needed supplementary government measures--will provide valuable guidance to overcoming any potential adverse effects while capitalizing on the benefits of automation.

In addition, I believe it is also desirable either through legislative or administrative action to establish a special high-level commission to conduct a broader evaluation of our technological course and the means of channeling progress toward meeting our society's unfilled needs.

The other action is to start a continuing top-level assessment of the relation of the government's programs and our country's manpower assets and needs.

I regard this as necessary to help us analyze and determine national programs from a human resources standpoint.

Congressional support for such action is already well reflected in the

--Manpower Development and Training Act's call for the Federal Government "to appraise the manpower requirements and resources of the Nation," and the

--Employment Act's mandate "to promote maximum employment, production, and purchasing power."

I am establishing for this purpose a President's Committee on Manpower, which will include the principal Federal executives administering programs which significantly affect our manpower, under the chairmanship of the Secretary of Labor.
The Committee will assist in appraising --the implications of major government programs and policies for our national manpower needs and resources,

--the interrelation of government programs to manpower requirements of other sectors of the economy, and

--the present and prospective manpower resources and requirements of the Nation.

Only through such considered appraisal and the development of improved techniques and data for current and long-range manpower assessment can we arm ourselves with adequate information and sound linking of separate programs--elements essential for full effectiveness in carrying forward an active manpower policy.

CONCLUSION

A fundamental objective of this Nation is to assure all Americans full and fair opportunity to develop and apply their maximum productive and earning potential. But progress toward that objective can too easily falter in competition with other concerns.

I have here urged several programs as parts of an active policy for full development and use of our manpower resources. I have set forth earlier a related program for a concentrated attack on poverty.

These programs will take hold and succeed only when we become determined that nothing is to take priority over people.

We have the ideas and ideals to reach our objective. We must now crystallize into action the sense of overriding commitment that nobody is to be passed by.

What is at stake is whether a free democratic economy can attain well-being for the less fortunate as well as the more fortunate of its people--and whether it can make population growth and technological advance fruitful for all rather than fateful for some.

It is up to us. Our action or inaction toward realizing the full potential of our human resources is a major factor in determining whether we will strengthen justice, security, and freedom at home--and enhance America's ability to set a proud example for all the world.

LYNDON B. JOHNSON