Chicago private firms holding Government contracts employ over 50,000 whitecollar workers. Between 1962 and 1963, these firms had a net increase of only 64 Negro white-collar employees.

Changes in job mix is another factor in the Negro employment problem.

The symbolic turning point is 1956-white-collar workers outnumbered bluecollar workers.

By 1970, there will be 25 percent more white-collar jobs than blue-collar jobs. The fastest growing group is that of professional and technical employeesrising from 5 million in 1950 to 71⁄2 million in 1960 to 10 million in 1970.

The displacement created by automation, the “upgrading" of jobs, and the rise of technicians, all constitute a new "face" in the industrial labor force.

The specific employment problems of Negroes are complicated by the dramatic increase of young workers in the 1960's.

During the present decade, 26 million young people, 3.5 million of whom are Negroes, will become first-time jobseekers. This compares with 19 million during the 1950's.

Of the 26 million youths coming into the labor force, 5 million will not have graduated from high school. Two million more will have had, at most, only an eighth grade education.

Negroes in Chicago have a dropout rate double that expected in the Nation during the 1960's and more than double that of whites in the city. In some allNegro shools in Chicago, the dropout rate may run as high as 80 percent. There are 350,000 Negroes currently in the Chicago area labor force. Thirty-five thousand of them are unemployed and seeking work.

Nineteen thousand are involuntarily on parttime.

Forty thousand are working below their current skill levels."

In addition, there are 15,000 Negroes who are discouraged workers and are not in the labor force. Because of the frustration of past and present racial discrimination and long histories of unemployment, they are no longer actively seeking work.3

Of those looking for work, the Illinois jobseekers survey, in 1961, showed that in Illinois 40 percent of the nonwhites had an eighth grade education or less. Another 34 percent did not complete high school. The survey also found that 81 percent of the State nonwhite jobseekers had semiskilled, unskilled and service occupations.

In spite of the fact that most Negro jobseekers are unskilled and have little education, in absolute numbers there are many well-trained Negro jobseekers. In 1964, in Chicago, there were 4,600 Negro high school graduates. Half of them (2,300) have or will enter the labor force on a full-time, permanent basis this year. Most of the others will go on to college.

The Chicago Urban League's talent and skills bank currently has on file persons with the following occupational background and training:

The employment and guidance advisory committee of the Chicago Urban League is confronted with the following tasks.

Upgrade those working below their capacity and who are probably educated in nontechnical and/or nonbusiness fields.

Apply imagination in the employment of people not specifically educated for business.

Develop and demonstrate the desirability of business training at the professional level to the Negro community, especially its youth.

Develop preemployment and postemployment training programs which will help Negroes qualify for jobs which demand more skills.

Increase the number of employers who are willing to adhere to equal employment opportunity at all levels.

2 The estimates of Negro employment at and below current skill levels are based upon the assumption that whites are employed 100 percent at their current skill level. To the extent that some whites are employed below their skill level, the Negro percentage in the category "employed below current skill level" would go up and the percentage in the category "employed at current skill levels" would go down.

The estimates for discouraged workers are based upon the assumption that there are no discouraged workers among whites. To the extent that there are some discouraged white minority groups, the percentage of Negro discouraged workers would go up.

Look for employees in places where you have a good chance of finding Negroes with the qualifications you are seeking.

Make a greater effort in upgrading Negro employees who are already at work. Review in your own organization to see if Negroes have qualified for better jobs through further education.

Work to see that quality public education is provided all children.

Some of these tasks refer to things that can be done within your own company. Some tasks are things that you can bring to the attention of other employers. Other tasks require work in the community at large. You can help the Chicago Urban League in all of these tasks, and the Chicago Urban League can help you.

EXCERPTS FROM "NEGRO UNEMPLOYMENT-A CASE STUDY" NEW UNIVERSITY THOUGHT (SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 1963)

(By Harold Baron)

"In the past decade there has been considerable pressure in the North for State and local laws to protect against discrimination in housing and employment, and this has recently been expanded into a massive assault upon de facto school segregation. However, where sucesses have been achieved in changing law or public policy, the most that has been actually gained is tokenistic breaches of racial barriers. Statutory remedies that rely on individual complaints by aggrieved parties are slow and permit many subtle subterfuges on the part of

the discriminators. Relatively few individuals receive better jobs or housing under the protection of these measures, and the basic pattern of second-class status remains unchanged. There is little or no evidence that ghettoes are disappearing. The relative gap between Negro and white family income has increased since the midfifties, indicating that Negro family income has not grown at the same pace as that of whites.

"The Kennedy administration, under pressure from action in the streets, has agreed to act in support of equality before the law, but it feels powerless to support real equality for Negroes. The Attorney General, Robert Kennedy, informed James Reston of the New York Times of the administration's puzzlement over ways to deal with the 17 percent rate of unemployment among Negroes in Chicago. An administration official stated the matter more succinctly to the Times. As he put it, 'you can desegregate a theater in Tallahassee much more easily than you can reduce the unemployment rate among Negroes in Chicago.' "If we want to find the elements in the status of the Negroes that are not susceptible to alteration without other far-reaching social changes, a hard look at economic conditions in the North might well tell us more than an examination of legal conditions in the South. Within this framework of understanding about the general nature of the civil rights movement, the following portrait of the anatomy of unemployment in Chicago can shed perspective on the future. I choose Chicago because I have known it intimately over the past decade, and I have studied it professionally over the past 2 years."

FOCUS ON CHICAGO

"With this background, let us focus on Chicago. In 1960, there were 813,000 Negroes in the city of Chicago, constituting 23 percent of the total population. There were 890,000 Negroes in the Chicago metropolitan area, comprising 14 percent of the total population. The Negro population of the area has grown rapidly, increasing more than threefold over the past 20 years.

"Labor force characteristics are reported for nonwhite; since Negroes constitute 97 percent of the nonwhites in Chicago, we can use the terms synonymously. Based on the 1960 census, there were 320,000 nonwhites in the labor force in the city, or slightly over 20 percent of the total. However, by government measures almost 43 percent of the unemployed were Negro. In the metropolitan area, nonwhites comprised 14 percent of the labor force and 35 percent of the unemployed. The 1960 measure was made in a period of economic recovery. In the recession during 1961, the Illinois State Employment Service made a survey of jobseekers. This study clearly indicated that Negroes were much harder hit by the recession, as the Negro proportion of the unemployed in the metropolitan area had risen to 40 percent of the total.

"These figures indicate that Negro workers have a very high rate of unemployment. In the city, the nonwhite unemployment rate for 1960 was 11.5 percent1 out of every 9 nonwhite in the labor force was out of a job. This compares to 3.7 percent unemployment for whites at that time. A metropolitan comparison shows a slightly greater disparity: 11.1 percent unempolyment for nonwhites compared to 3.1 percent for whites. Negro unemployment in Chicago is close to four times as great as that for whites, while nationally the ratio is only a little over 2 to 1. During the recession of 1961, our estimates (based on the data in the Illinois State Employment Services special survey) indicate that in the metropolitan area, Negro unemployment rose to a rate of 15 percent while unemployment for white remained below 4 percent. The 1963 situation is likely to approximate that of 1960, as the total unemployment rate for the area is virtually the same for both years.

"As shocking as these racial disparities are, they tell only a portion of the tale. The Government concept of unemployment is a labor market concept. i.e., it counts as unemployed only those persons who are actively seeking jobs. It is not a social concept of unemployment; it does not include those people who would be in the labor market if they thought they had a chance of obtaining a job. This group has been aptly called 'discouraged workers,' discouraged because they have been rebuffed so often. I have seen these men and heard their stories many times. On the basis of 1960 census data, I have made estimates of nonwhite male discouraged workers. These calculations showed that in the city of Chicago there were 12,000 nonwhite male discouraged workers-over 5.5 percent of the nonwhite male labor force. If these men are added to the 21,400 unemployed men, we get a total of 33,400 or over half the unemployed men in the city. Using