VOL. V, NO. 9

In a period of greatest prosperity the nation has ever known, unemployment has stayed frozen at 5 1/2 per cent.

The ones hardest hit by unemployment have been the youth, especially those who drop out of school without having finished high school or those who have just put in four years of high school without acquiring any knowledge.

For boys 16-19 looking for jobs, unemployment has been running four times the average for men 20 and over. In September and October, 1963, one out of every seven teenage boys out of school was also out of work. For girls 16-19 the unemployment rate was still higher. More than 15 per cent had no job.

"What has happened," secretary of Labor W. W. Wirtz explains, "is that technology has now developed to a point where machines have, on the average, ability equivalent to a high school education. More precisely, most work which has been done by people with less than a high school education can now be done more cheaply by machines, so most people without a high school education are not going to find meaningful employment. Two‑thirds of the unemployed today have less than a high school education."

We must become a more versatile people, with more skills and broader understanding of the modern world. In order to keep our position as a world power, the country's industry must automate.

Even a high school diploma is not likely to be enough in a world of automated technology.