Mr. FOGARTY. What is this language on page 29, which reads: Provided, No State shall be required to make any appropriation—

et cetera?

Mr. FOSTER. That is the elimination of the matching requirement of the Wagner-Peyser Act.

At the end of the war they started eliminating that, I think.

Mr. GOODWIN. It has been in every appropriation act since the Employment Service has returned to the States, which was in 1946. Mr. FOGARTY. Thank you, Mr. Goodwin. Mr. GOODWIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 1951.

WOMEN'S BUREAU

WITNESSES

FRIEDA S. MILLER, DIRECTOR, WOMEN'S BUREAU
ANNE LARRABEE, ASSISTANT TO THE DIRECTOR

JAMES E. DODSON, BUDGET OFFICER, DEPARTMENT OF LABOR

Mr. FOGARTY. Miss Miller, do you have a statement?

GENERAL STATEMENT

Miss MILLER. Yes, sir. If I may, I should like to call to your attention a few things that are significant in the work of the Women's Bureau, and I think significant in the present emergency, where women constitute, as everybody seems to agree, the most important single reserve of labor.

HISTORY OF LABOR FORCE

I would like to point out to you first what has happened to our labor force in the period since 1870, with particular reference to these three columns on this chart that I have here, that represent the changes in the last 10 years.

The blue column is men in the labor force. The red column is women in the labor force. And there [indicating] are little figures that show the size of our Armed Forces, except in these two instances where we have used bars, the only times the size of the Armed Forces meant enough so that we could portray them in that way.

Now, the increase in the labor force, both men and women, of course, is a very striking thing; but it is significant that, when you translate these columns into their numerical meaning, there are four times as many men working today as 1870; there are nine times as many

women.

During World War II—this being 1944-there were, of course, appreciably more women than there are now. At this point on the chart, here, there were 14,000,000; at this point, 20,500,000; and, at this point, our latest figure is 19,000,000.

WOMEN IN THE LABOR MARKET

I would like to emphasize, because of present questions, that the increase of 6,500,000 here [indicating] was voluntarily achieved. At no time during that period was there any compulsion put upon women to work. They came into the labor market because they felt there was

a job to do. Three million of them left the labor market voluntarily after the war. Still, it is a fact that the women in the labor market now are many more than they were in 1940.

There are nearly 39,000,000 women who are not working or seeking work. Those are the people who might be called upon if we have great need for the expansion of employment.

I think the facts on this second chart will be helpful when you are thinking about expansion.

Seventy percent of these 39,000,000 are women who are married and living in a family group. As you see here [indicating], the great bulk in this married group are in the child-bearing ages. Those are the normal families of the country. Fifteen percent and a little bit over of the 39,000,000 women not in the labor force are women who have married at some time, and many of whom have dependents. You will see from the distribution there that it is very probable that a great many women in the younger age groups in the country are working. The bulk of these widowed, divorced, or separated women who are not working are 65 years and over. Here you have the very reverse [indicating]. Of the single women who are not working, over 70 percent are 19 years or younger. They are the people who are getting ready for their idependent careers. The rest of these single women are small percentages.

I do want to stress this chart. Because it would seem to me only a very severe demand for additional labor would require us to draw on the women with young children. It would therefore be the women whose children had passed the age where they need care, younger single women past school age, and, in general, old women, whom we would think of as our most immediate source of labor supply.

Interestingly, that is the way employment runs [indicating third chart].

EMPLOYMENT OF OLDER WOMEN

This solid line here is the employment of older women. There is the job after 1945 I spoke of, but we have broken out here women 45 years of age and over, and you notice that, even while total employment was dropping, the employment of older women was still increasing.

MARRIAGE STATUS OF WOMEN

The other significant thing in relation to the present picture of the employment of women is their marriage status. This column is young people under 19 years of age; this column increased during the war somewhat, but decreased again afterward. This other is women 20 to 34 years old, a shrinking column, which went down from nearly half in 1940 to 36 and a fraction percent in 1950, while the older groups were increasing in every case.

The very small black block at my left is those 65 years of age and

over.

Voluntarily, older women are constituting themselves an increasing part of the labor force.

Very important in this connection is the change in the martial status of women who work. This has been most marked since World War II. At that time for the first time married women constituted a bigger

bloc among employed women than did the single, and that has continued, so that in 1949, which is the last date for which I can give you figures, 50.9 percent of women workers were married. In 1910 it was only 24.3 percent; so you see there has been more than doubling there.

Single women are down to 33 percent, while in 1910 they were 61 percent. This more even bloc here is the widowed and divorced.

MARRIED WOMEN AVAILABLE TO THE LABOR FORCE

I would like to point out to you what is fact as to the families of women who are not in the labor force; because really your question, when you are thinking of labor supply, is: Who among these women not now working could be added if an emergency really required it? Over 60 percent of the married women are under 45 years of age. Thirty percent are between 45 and 65 and are probably far freer to take employment.

When you take all women who are married today or have been married-the widowed and divorced-and who also have dependents and whose dependents are likely to be a heavier charge upon them, I find half of that total group-almost 17,000,000-have children under 18; that is, some children just under 18, with the lower ages falling wherever they may.

If you deduct from that 17,000,000 those whose children are all 12 years old or older, you still have 14,000,000 women with children under 12, and almost 11,000,000 with children under 6 years of age. Here you obviously come upon the situation where it would be at great cost to the country if these 11,000,000 were required to go to work.

OCCUPATIONAL CLASSIFICATIONS OF WOMEN

The other important question in relation to women workers in an emergency situation is what they do, and this next chart is an attempt to show you graphically the changes that came about from 1940 to the peak of World War II employment, and then the subsequent changes as they made the situation appear by 1950. These are the major occupational classifications of the census here. Again the blue blocks are men; the red blocks are women.

You will see that there are a few categories of women which are a very negligible part of the employment situation, and while there was some war increase, there was very little. But there are certain areas in which, during the war, women's employment was very important, notably here [indicating] among operatives.

The other great increase in employment and increase in the use of women is in the clerical field and in all record keeping that goes on in a great undertaking like World War II. You will notice there has been a continuously high employment rate and also an expansion in the employment of men.

You may be interested in the agricultural line, where in 1940 women were an insignificant part of the total. But, obviously, agricultural employment had to be kept up; the bars for 1940 and 1945 for men and women combined are almost identical in height; women just filled in to keep agriculture up and here in 1950 have left.

This probably represents mechanization in agriculture within the period since 1945.

We would have to look forward, in a period of an emergency, to a shift again into the heavy productions occupations, into expansion of service and clerical work, and probably a further withdrawal from household employment which went down markedly during the war and has hardly come up since.

I think those are all the factors that are of policy interest in relation to any program of employment, and they are, of course, for the Women's Bureau, matters of concern in programing its own work. They lead us to a realization that it is our business to supply employers and public agencies and others who have a concern with it, our experience on the selection, the training, the induction of women into areas where they are beginning to be wanted.

Advice also on the provision of facilities that will make it possible not only to bring women in, but to keep them at work and to get the benefit of the training that is necessary if there are to be occupation shifts. It means consultation and advice with educators and other training groups for the shortage areas so far as wanted skills of women are concerned, and as those are going to develop in the future. It means consultation with and advice to State labor departments, which are the agencies that administer many of the labor laws that apply to the conditions under which we are working-as to good working standards and how to maintain them, that is. It means provision of material to opinion-forming groups, because, as you are probably aware from your own mail, there is a good deal of difference of opinion concerning what are good policies in recruitment, in placement, in the handling of expansion of employment.

BUDGET REQUEST

That, I think, gives you a very broad outline as regards the facts as we find them and our purpose in working on this situation now in the year ahead. I might say as to the estimate that it is $3,000 less than the sum originally appropriated for the current year. There was deducted, by the terms of section 1214 of the 1951 appropriation act, $10,000.

As we read you our last year's position and our program for this year, we decided that the thing to do was to make our savings primarily in printing, because some of our work there could be postponed. It is proposed in the present budget to restore $7,000 of that amount so that we reach this figure of $3,000 less than last year's total.

THE WOMEN'S BUREAU IN RELATION TO DEFENSE PROGRAM

Mr. HEDRICK (presiding). I see this has been divided into four sections. I wonder if you would consider each one of those and tell us how they fit into the defense program of our country at the present time?

INVESTIGATIONS

Miss MILLER. The first of these activities is investigating and reporting on conditions affecting women workers. The charts you see are the reports which we publish, the basis for advice to employers on