Rain Tomorrow

Sunny California took a cloudy view of the future last week. The state whose citizens earned $12 billion in 1943 (and the nation’s second highest per capita income: $1,452) must prepare for a sharp drop to $9.5 billion within a year after the war. So warned California’s postwar planning Reconstruction and Re-employment Commission.

Having climbed higher than the nation in wartime, said the state report, California has farther to fall. A large proportion of its workers are in the well-paid war baby industries, shipbuilding and aircraft. Thus, some 400,000 to 800,000 Californians may be out of work at war’s end. To provide jobs the state must sell 25% more of its products to outside markets than in 1940, build up new industries. Concluded the report: “Neither California nor the nation as a whole are going to be as well off after the war as the wishful thinkers have been hoping.”