No Improvement

From the Labor Department last week came the sobering report that for the eleventh straight month the U.S. unemployment rate stood near 6.8%. Superficially, the statistics had an encouraging side: the actual number of unemployed fell to 3,934,000 last month--the first time since October a year ago that the figure has dropped below 4,000,000. But a drop of this size is the normal seasonal pattern in October. Since unemployment is usually at its lowest in October, it promised to be a cold winter for a large part of the U.S. labor force.

Faced with this glum news, Labor Department spokesmen abandoned all effort to blame hurricanes or strikes for the stubborn persistence of large-scale unemployment. The plain fact was that, despite its overall strength, the U.S. economy was failing to perform one of its important functions: providing enough jobs to go around. And in the minds of many observers the dark suspicion was growing that the situation was never going to improve until the nation faced the fact that it was undergoing a technological revolution comparable to that of the 18th century, and gave higher priority than it yet has to coping with the consequences.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.