LABOR: Jobless January

A manufacturing slack, post-Christmas retail layoffs and post-NRA lengthening of working hours were blamed by the American Federation of Labor last week for the fact that an estimated 1,229,000 persons lost their jobs last January, as compared with 669,000 in January 1935. A five-year record for the month, the loss brought the A. F. of L.’s estimate of total unemployed to 12,626,000. Its figure for January 1933: 13,100,000.

Gloomed President William Green: “It indicates that industry is making no determined effort to put the unemployed to work and is quite willing to shirk all responsibility for them. Under such conditions even the continuing production gains we hope for this spring will do little to restore the millions of jobs needed.”