The Pittsburgh Press (June 17, 1945)
Perkins: Peace, jobs and women
By Fred W. Perkins, Press Washington correspondent
WASHINGTON – The Women’s Bureau of the U.S. Labor Department is doing in its field a job so far neglected in some others – surveying the probabilities of employment for women after we get back on a peace basis.
The bureau finds that more women than had been anticipated say they want to continue in employment after the war. This enlarges the problem of how enough jobs are going to be provided for all the people who will want to work, including men and women now working and millions of returned veterans.
As to the general attitude of women now employed, the bureau concludes that women do not want to exclude veterans from jobs, but they do want the consideration due them as citizens. Having votes, they are in position to do something about it.
Personal-interview surveys have been conducted by the Women’s Bureau in 11 centers. Results have been announced for Detroit and Erie County (Buffalo), New York.
The Detroit survey showed that three of every four women workers plan to continue working after the defeat of Japan, and that 85 percent of those who want peacetime jobs must earn their own living. Many have the responsibility of supporting other persons.
More want to work
The Buffalo survey shows that of 114,000 women employed in Erie County, 80 percent, or 91,000 expect to continue working after the war. Many of the 23,000 who expect to stop work when their war jobs end base their plans on return of husbands from the armed forces. The great majority of the Buffalo women who want peace jobs live at home and contribute regularly to support of their families, according to the Women’s Bureau.
Significant Buffalo result is that about 50 percent more women plan to keep on working after the war than were employed in that area in 1940. Three times as many women wish to continue in manufacturing as were thus employed in 1940.
The size of the problem is nationally shown by the fact that the number of employed women rose from 11,260,000 in 1940 to 17,750,000 in April 1945. In 1940, 1,830,000 women who wanted jobs were listed as unemployed, while this year the number listed as unemployed was only 340,000.
Frieda S. Miller, director of the Women’s Bureau, points out that the increase in the number of women workers must be analyzed in relation to long-time trends for the country as a whole. Census records show that decade by decade, with only slight variations, the number of women in the labor force increases as a result of both population growth and a consistent tendency for a larger proportion of women to hold jobs.
For instance, the U.S. Census Bureau states that 1.5 million women who entered the labor market during the war would have done so had there been no war.
In the Buffalo survey, it was found that all but 1,500 of the women who plan to continue working want jobs in that city. That is because practically all the Buffalo women workers have lived there since before Pearl Harbor. This situation, the bureau said, differs markedly from some other areas that have been studied, and in which there was a substantial in-migration of women for war work. This has also been noted in Detroit and in West Coast cities.
Typical results
Some of the Buffalo results are typical of general conditions. One is that nearly all the single women, and widowed or divorced women, want to keep at work, while only a little more than half of the married women plan to continue working.
Some other typical cases from Buffalo:
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A machine operator in an aircraft plant thinks it will be necessary for her to work for one or two years after her fiancé returns from the service. If he does not return, she wants to keep on working indefinitely.
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An aircraft assembler with take-home earnings of $32 a week feels that she must save for the future as her husband has a bad heart and in the past, they frequently had to rely on public relief.
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A candy-store clerk with $17.30 take-home a week must work, as her husband died recently and she has to support herself and three children.
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A saleswoman wants to continue working so that she and her husband can get their home paid for.
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A bookkeeper-stenographer in a dental laboratory wants to continue working until she marries.
These and other instances show there is much more than mere statistics in the women-in-industry question.