Trouble & Hope

"The unemployment situation is very grave." With these words, Secretary of Labor Arthur Goldberg last week voiced the new Administration's concern about its biggest domestic problem. The Labor Department announced that the number of workers drawing insured unemployment benefits rose by 228,900 in January's first week to reach 3,300,000, or 8.1% of all those covered and just short of a record number for the 24-year-old compensation plan. Since insured unemployment figures usually preview total unemployment figures (two-thirds of the labor force is protected by unemployment compensation), the Labor Department now figures that January's unemployment total may have reached 6,000,000, more than 7% of the U.S. labor force. This week, as a first step toward relieving the unemployment situation, President John F. Kennedy is expected to ask Congress to approve the grant of federal funds to states for payment to the some 500,000 unemployed U.S. workers whose unemployment benefit payments have run out.

U.S. department store sales were 5% below year-earlier levels for the last week reported, largely because of bad weather. Manhattan's Industrial Commodity Corp., a private economic forecasting firm, held out hope for better times ahead. It reported that new orders and retail sales of consumer nondurable goods have begun to climb after mid-1960 dips. While new orders are still running behind retail sales, the forecasting firm figures that they are reverting to the closely similar pattern the two have held for years (see chart), and expects a further rise. It also feels that apparel sales are bound to turn upward. Reason: they have kept pace for years with disposable income, which is now well above sales. Said Commodity Corp.'s President J. Carvel Lange: "Recent behavior of new orders and sales--a favorable relation of orders to sales, with both in a rising trend--is the first encouraging hint of better general business in the making.''

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