The Great Employment Controversy

The fear of technological unemployment is a very real one in the minds of millions of American workers. Although the long-run record indicates that technology and employment have expanded simultaneously, the short-run rec ord contains plenty of evidence of temporary displacement, if not permanent unemployment, of a large sector of our labor force. Furthermore, there has been a tendency toward pro gressive economic decline in the last decade with the percent age of unemployment rising at the peak of prosperity of the last three business cycles, as well as rising at the trough, and with the length of the last three prosperity periods becoming shorter in duration. A retraining bill to alleviate these condi tion, in part, has been drawn up and has received wide biparti san support in both houses of Congress and by the President. In the last analysis, however, private business firms, unions, and government will have to work more closely together to prevent the disadvantages of automation from outweighing the more obvious and more highly publicized advantages.