that anything we as a Nation can do today to equip and locate the midlife woman in the mainstream of our work force will certainly cushion these people and the rest of the Nation against the future shock of their unemployment and economic dependence.

Comments I would like to offer to these hearings fall into three specific areas. I will attempt to make them very brief under each heading but I will attempt to cover our experience with the employment of midlife women, the scope of employment opportunities for this group today, and some specific activity in which our company proposes to involve itself.

I would like to call to your attention one particular statistic related to this group that we're discussing.

Today, more than one-third of the women in the U.S. labor force are 45 years of age or older. This is proof enough that we are not studying a phenomenon that is either unique or temporary in nature but, rather, we are viewing a permanent change as it is taking place. The experience of Manpower, Inc., very much parallels the general labor force statistics. In a study completed by our research department just 1 month ago, we found that approximately 28 percent of all of our female office work employees for the years 1977-78 were over 40 years of age. Most of these women are with us for a relatively short period of time-perhaps 6 months, no more than 1 year. During that period, we are able to provide for them a variety of work experiences with different companies that gives them a sound and useful orientation in today's business world, as well as a gradual adjustment to the change from homemaking to office work.

As you would expect, a substantial number of these women go on to a permanent job. Our research figures indicate that half of our temporary office workers ultimately accept permanent employment. Approximately half of this group will, in fact, be offered a permanent job by one of the companies to which they were assigned by us. While we're not in the permanent employment agency business and do not want to be one, we do recognize the value to both our clients and our employees of an ultimate employment relationship resulting from a Manpower employment experience. The balance of the women who work for Manpower continue on either an intermittent or fairly steady basis to work on temporary assignments as a Manpower employee.

Mr. BURTON. Excuse me, Mr. Fromstein. Because you have a time problem and there may be questions members want to ask, could you summarize as best you can the highlights of the report? Your entire statement is part of the record.

Mr. FROMSTEIN. If you'll permit me just to take half a second to get in my notes and locate myself.

Mr. BURTON. Certainly.

Mr. FROMSTEIN. Without additional comment I would like to describe a private initiative in which our company will involve itself during the next 6 months. Our objective, of course, is to aid ourselves as well as the people that we come in contact with. Ourselves, from the standpoint of being able to find the women, midlife women from homemaking positions with skills we can use today and immediately. We are going to mount three different initiatives. The first is an information program in which Manpower, Inc., will invest both its staff time. and some seed money to test the effectiveness of the newsletter which can contain work force reentry data for midlife women. In it, we hope

to discuss opportunities, needed skills, and income possibilities. We will seek cosponsors in five test markets in the United States, perhaps a supermarket chain, a bank, or a department store to aid us in the widespread distribution of these newsletters, and we will seek the cooperation and support of local media, where we can get it, for our program. The idea here is to break an information block which we do believe exists.

The second program is one that we've been developing for some time and we will now accelerate. It is a series of tests under which our offices of Manpower, Inc., in the United States would offer office skills training to midlife reentrants. Some skills would be updated, that is, present skills will be brought back to speed; some would be taught from scratch. This training would be offered to applicants on a no-charge basis and would result in paid temporary office work assignments through us immediately following the training period.

Our third, and to me the most exciting possibility, will involve a totally new concept but one that could have a significant impact on job opportunities. We are going to attempt to dissolve a barrier that I describe as "no recent work experience," which is described in my full testimony, which I believe stands as a major obstacle between the midlife reentrant and a job. We're going to call the program “One Thousand Jobs" because that's our immediate test objective, and we, Manpower, Inc., will undertake to reintroduce 1,000 midlife women to the work force by subsidizing a period of 40 hours of worklife reorientation in the actual offices of our customer companies. We will pay each woman at the prevailing entry-level wage rates and provide them to our customers at no charge for that critical threshold reentry period. In this way, those with skills but no experience will have the opportu nity to test the waters, acquire more self-confidence, a great deal of knowledge, and a paycheck, while our customers will not be asked to pay for the learning period. In effect, we will absorb a total subsidy of approximately $250,000 in a 90-day attempt to break down a 90-year barrier for 1,000 women who want to return to work right now. We will conduct the program on a test basis in the 4 largest cities of America and hope that we can help 20 midlife women in each market get back to work.

I want to repeat that the initiative and its attending costs will be borne by our company. It is not that we're trying to paint ourselves as heroes. We'll not seek the support of any government program or funding. If it works, the resulting increase to us of additional Manpower officeworkers will be reward enough. I might add that our company will highly value the pride it can take if it solves at least one small employment problem completely on its own. We will keep you posted of our progress and respectfully seek your sincere and strong moral support.

I thank you kindly for the opportunity to appear at these hearings. I am proud to be the sole male in the company of such an esteemed list of female witnesses. Thank you.

Mr. BURTON. Thank you very much for your testimony and I would like to congratulate you for actually doing something about the problem with your "One Thousand Jobs" idea. Will you get any type of tax relief for your expenditure in that area. Are they soft dollars or are they actually hard dollars?

Mr. FROMSTEIN. There really is no tax treatment other than the fact that these will, in fact, be expenses of ours so they are deductible from income before taxes and, therefore, the net impact of that after taxes will be about half.

Mr. BURTON. In other words, what you are doing is providing the job opportunity or interviews and employment service almost without charge.

Mr. FROMSTEIN. But, in fact, more than that. Because we will be issuing a paycheck for the first hours of actual work on the job that does not involve testing or interviewing, or anything else. We will actually attempt to take women with either rusty skills or questionable skills, or some lack of confidence and put them into a work situation for a period of a full week, so that they can get the feel of being back in the work force and that our customers, the larger customers in the country who use our temporary office work should not be asked to bear the expense of the sort of break-in period. Mr. BURTON. That's terrific. Mr. Green?

Mr. GREEN. Mr. Fromstein, you indicated there is a shortage of officeworkers, and yet we know we have very considerable problems of unemployment in this country, particularly young minority people and also, as we have been learning today, perhaps people who are not even counted in the work force in the person of the midlife woman. Why do you feel we have this unemployment in the midst of shortage, and what can we do about it?

Mr. FROMSTEIN. The biggest problem is the problem that we had with our unemployment picture in general, and it is focused and magnified here, and that is that the jobs that are open are not matched to the skills available. And, therefore, you have exactly as you have described it, unemployment and the shortage of people. Now, it has always sort of been there at professional levels, engineering, medical, and in some cases, legal. But when you get down to the officeworker, it is not something that people have been conscious of until the last few years. But I submit to you that that shortage of officeworkers is getting to be a shortage that is every bit as critical as the oil shortage in this country, and if paperwork doesn't flow through both Washington and the business communities of this Nation, you will have the same situation as you have with no oil.

Mr. GREEN. You seem to be suggesting there is something misdirected in our vocational education program.

Mr. FROMSTEIN. Yes, I believe it is. I'm not an educational expert or a governmental expert, but I know that somehow along the line the idea of being something "more than an office worker" is becoming much more attractive. The change in the woman's role and opportunities opened to them have removed a great number of women from the potential office worker force, and properly so, and nothing has been done to attract men. Just a handful of those will go into office work. I think part of it is due to the business community's failure to make secretarial work a rung on a ladder instead of a ceiling of a class and I think that perhaps we deserve everything we will get in this shortage of office workers. What can be done on a crash basis is exactly what I am proposing here today; and that is that we will have to come to the group of women in the midlife homemaker category because, in fact, those are the only people, except those fully employed, that have these skills and want to get back to work, and can solve the problem. Mr. GREEN. Thank you.

Mr. BURTON. Ms. Oakar.

Ms. OAKAR. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Fromstein, we know that 98 percent of all the typists are women, and 78 percent of all the clerical workers happen to be women. Are most of the people you place women?

Mr. FROMSTEIN. Yes, I would say so.

MS. OAKAR. Why do you call yourself Manpower?

Mr. FROMSTEIN. I'll answer that question if you will call in the Secretary of Labor of the United States and have him tell me why he calls his department, the CETA program and everything involved with it Manpower.

Ms. OAKAR. You do not think that it is right that he does that though, do you?

Mr. FROMSTEIN. No, we think it is very wrong and, of course, that is in jest. Our company name was developed some 30 years ago. We take a great pride in it and we defend it.

Ms. OAKAR. Sure. I want to say that I think one of the programs you described is excellent and I applaud you for it but you did mention in your testimony and I think it's great you are here you did mention that you aren't getting the people to come and apply for the kinds of positions you have open and if, in fact, you're placing more women than men maybe the name is rather inhibiting. Maybe they don't know just by the name that that is for them. I do want to say that we have a notoriously unfair value system in our country about jobs and I personnally value my secretary as much as anyone on my staff. I am just wondering in terms of job placement do you find that those women or men that you place in the clerical field get a properand of course, you are trying to do your job-but do you find that they are getting a proper salary compared to other professions?

Mr. FROMSTEIN. It is a hard question to answer because it varies very much according to the condition of the labor market in any city. But clerical, general clerical typists positions are entry level kinds of positions. They lead upward, but just so far. Certainly, you cannot compare that kind of a position with a professional position; the kind you were describing. I would say that most of the people are earning, once they are acclimated to the work force and into a permanent job, and most often even with us, that they are getting very close to the prevailing wage rates in the marketplace. The market condition just demands it; we can't find them without it.

Ms. OAKAR. That's probably why though, you see, you don't get more people who want to work in an office because they are not getting paid a just salary. Yet, where is any office without good typists. I am not trying to make the profession loftier than it is but it seems to me that somehow our values about those kinds of jobs might not be correct. Mr. FROMSTEIN. I agree.

Ms. OAKAR. I wonder if you've had women who have been faced with this example come in and ask you to get them a job. I am thinking of a woman who is 48 or 50 years old-and I know of cases like this-who has worked for a certain employer for 15 to 20 years and all of a sudden because she is not in a tenured position; she is, in a nice way, laid off. She's not "needed" any longer, so they say that the job is no longer necessary because of automation. Have you found that kind of a woman coming to you for a job who worked in a certain area for a number of years and finally got laid off?

Mr. FROMSTEIN. Very rarely in the office area. We find that the security of office workers, both economically during recession periods and from a longevity point of view in the company, is really stronger. That is the one place the women really have the edge; the security of their jobs is really stronger than that of most men. We did just sort of a fun study a couple of years ago that indicated from business executives, we asked them if they had to get rid of one, either their secretary or their sales manager, which would they choose, and the preponderance of them said, "the sales manager because I could replace him, but not my secretary because I couldn't replace her."

Ms. OAKAR. I bet the sales manager made more money than his secretary did.

Mr. FROMSTEIN. Probably five times as much. As far as security goes, it is there and there is very little automation. Of course, your own Government's studies have shown that has not lowered at all the demand for office workers.

Ms. OAKAR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.

Mr. BURTON. I would like to welcome Congresswoman Ferraro from New York. Do you have any questions?

MS. FERRARO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I did not have the opportunity to hear Mr. Fromstein's testimony. However, I will be able to read it and if I have any questions I would like to be able to submit them to Mr. Fromstein.

Mr. BURTON. That was an excellent statement, Mr. Fromstein. I for one would like to congratulate you on your 1,000 jobs idea. I would guess that you will be deluged with applicants, and I certainly hope you are. Manpower, Inc. initiative is certainly to be commended. We hope that many other corporations will follow your example in initiating and funding programs which will serve the needs of midlife women. Again, my warm congratulations.

The next witness will be Ellie Smeal, president of the National Organization for Women, which has probably done more to identify issues and raise the level of consciousness about the problems of women in America than any other organization. It is a pleasure to have you. We do have your statement that we would like to include in the record. To the extent that you can summarize it without losing its impact, it will be helpful.

[See appendix 1, p. 107 for Ms. Smeal's prepared statement.] STATEMENT OF ELEANOR CUTRI SMEAL, PRESIDENT, NATIONAL ORGANIZATION FOR WOMEN

Ms. SMEAL. Thank you very much, and I will summarize as much as possible.

I am pleased to appear before the subcommittee today to discuss. the crisis of women in midlife, and to present NOW's recommendations for the national policy affecting midlife women. As president of the largest national feminist organization, I am representing over 100,000 men and women dedicated to achieving full equality for women.

We are very pleased that this subcommittee has chosen to hold hearings on this subject, and we congratulate you and salute you for organizing the compendium of papers on women in midlife. We think this is an encouraging step and that, in fact, before we can move to the solutions we must fully recognize all the problems, and we also